No Love
by Tarask
Summary: A young Thorin discovers romance on the roads of exile. But this can't be love, and this can't be easy. Het, Thorin/OC, rated M.
1. Chapter 1

So I was reading about all these stories of blacksmith Thorin pleasuring women in his youth (and my oh my some are really steamy!), and wondering how that would really work with all that thing about dwarves loving only once, in a realistic but still Tolkien-infused kind of canon.

And so here I come with a story of young Thorin discovering romance – but is it love?

I intended it to be a one-shot but since it seems I can't write things short there should be a chapter or two more, though the story shouldn't become a +100,000 words monster.

It's romance, so you can bet there's going to be some lovemaking. It's the first time I'm writing something like that, and I hope first that it works and second that I've calibrated it well enough for the rating. If not I'd love to post it to AO3 but now you need an invite...

The timeline is mostly from the LotR appendices, with a few tweakings because the dwarves I'm seeing in my mind are Peter Jackson's. So Thorin was twenty-four when Smaug entered Erebor, but Dwalin is about his age and Balin is older.

I'm still not a native speaker and still would welcome any kind of constructive criticism. I really don't know if I'm making this kind of present-tense writing/strict third person POV work and my eyes are crossing with all the times I wrote the word "and". Please let me know what you think!

-oOOOo-

Thorin son of Thráin son of Thrór reaches forty the day before they enter the town. There's nothing momentous in that. That makes him of age, but still very young for a Dwarf, and who cares; he's been on the roads since he was twenty-four, and in these sixteen years he's learned that a name can be a curse as well as an honour, that no heirloom holds a higher price than the bread of the next day, and that pride in one's craft is nothing if they don't let you work.

They're a band of ten Dwarves, among them Balin and Dwalin. These two Thorin calls friends; and he knows that in the eyes of his father they're still his guard, though Dwalin is but one year older than him and Balin not that experienced himself. Yet no one in this Dunland town could tell the ward from his guardians: they all have dirt ingrained deep in their nails and the crevices of their hands and the pores of their skin; their hoods are of rough homespun, and what leather they still wear is what a workman needs, and it's scraped and tattered and old; what metal still remains on their clothing has been picked back up a thousand times and carefully sewn back in place, a few more pieces lost each time. What weapons they have they keep mostly hidden, for fear of scaring their potential employers. The whole of them are here to find work: anything that will pay above what they need for their meals, clothing and some ale in the evenings. What they can save they'll take back to Thráin, who's trying to settle down and get a small forge going – how could he move as they do on the roads with Dis still so young, Thrór who sometimes won't hide his pride and other times will not curb his helpless greed, and Thráin's wife, maimed sixteen years ago and now so frail that Thorin all but knows while he's away she'll one day find her rest in the stone?

There's work in the town. The mines are in need of small stout dwarves who won't fear the dark and will know the good stone. Balin, small even for a dwarf, nimble and well-versed in gems lore, volunteers and takes with him most of the group. The town blacksmith asks for three workmen with strong arms to hammer at iron, nothing fancy and especially nothing crafty: he's the master and he's the one with the skill, and Thorin thinks it's all right because the wages are in coin and so he goes with Dwalin and another. They'll stay for one season, one year or maybe two, and then as always there will be rumours or jealously or they'll just have enough of it and go elsewhere.

The work is thankless – it always is. Dwarves are renowned for their dedication to their task and everyone expects them to keep at it as long as there's something to be done, so the days off are few and far between. Yet there's an inn and they find themselves there most evenings, each of them nursing one lonely pint of ale and earning a reputation of misers. They bring makeshift music instruments, a drum or a flute or a crude lute and they'll often sing, and then the Men will stop and listen. Thorin sings as often as the others and tries not to fall back to the sagas and great airs of his royal childhood, but he can't shake the sadness from his songs.

There's a girl who will serve them their pint more often than the others maids, and one day as she sets his ale in front of Thorin she calls him my Dwarf Prince. She's jesting, Thorin can hear the mirth in her voice, but when he looks up the smile doesn't reach her eyes, and he tries to discourage her by looking back down at his grimy hands.

The next evening she's back with his pint and she calls him that again, and again the evening after. So Thorin begins to hide more into the group of dwarves, and he sings less often and tries to remain inconspicuous, but he still goes to the inn in the evenings and watches her. She has her honour, this one; she's a maid, not a whore, and she'll swiftly discourage all the roaming hands, physically if needed. But it doesn't look like she is particularly regarded by her fellow Men, some girl alone in the world and already made hard. She's tall, of course, tall like a child of Men and Thorin couldn't say if she's taller or smaller than what her race is used to. Her hair is dark brown and her skin swarthy like most of her people, but there's something peculiar that Thorin notices: yellow-green eyes, clear with a darker ring of grey. He finds himself wondering if there's a gemstone somewhere that mirrors their colour, thinks of amber and some hues of cat's eye but decides finally that her eyes are too alien, never dwarvish, too earthy and vegetal in colour to be compared to a stone.

The next evening he sits alone with his pipe and when she sets the pint in front of him and still names him a prince, he catches her wrist and asks her why she calls him so. Why, he asks her, when they're all clothed the same, when he hasn't got a coin to his name – which is true, since everything will go to Thráin.

She looks down at him and now there's laughter in her eyes. It's the bearing, she tells him, the bearing and the setting himself apart and also the way he _accessorises_.

When his eyebrows shoot up she explains more. With a tilt of her chin she gestures to the bone beads at the end of his braids, their pattern matching the one of the leather on his wrists; and to the blue of the string holding the rest of his hair back, which indeed is the same hue as his hood. She says it's always discreet, never gaudy, but always there, and she never notices the same care in the other dwarves; that it looks like he was once used to choosing among a large wardrobe. She ends, laughing, by telling him that he might be a natural at princedom.

Then he smiles, too, and tells her that if that makes him a prince, then she's surely a princess. Because now that she's sitting in front of him him, he notices the same care and taste in her cheap adornments, a simple pendant on her throat that compliments her strange eyes, a thin but well-crafted line of embroidery along her tunic collar echoing the one on the waist of her skirt.

She laughs again and remains a moment with him, until she has to rise up and go back to another customer.

The sitting together soon becomes a habit. One month into it and Balin notices, and when, later in the night, they go back to their lodgings, he takes Thorin apart and asks him about it. Thorin raises an eyebrow and tells his friend that comradeship can be found in the strangest of places, to which Balin looks like he's about to shake his head – but he does not, only smiles a tight smile and goes to bed.

Two months into it and they've begun exchanging stories about their day of work. She'll tell him of her strangest customers and the peculiar mixtures they'll sometimes imbibe; he tells her of the most outrageous breaches of smith lore he sees his master commit. She soon sees that he's much more of a craftsman than his job asks for, and he sees that she has much more care for her fellow men than is healthy for an inn maid. Thorin tells himself that they're a gift to each other, total strangers able to listen to each other's woes and lift a bit of their daily sorrows. But he doesn't speak to her about anything else than his day, and shirks away when she tries to make him talk about older times.

They're three months into it when it first happens. For days, he's been doing the rough work for shaping a plough blade. Ploughs in these areas are spectacular work, made strong and large to be drawn by oxen and to upturn a deep, heavy earth. Thorin is proud of what he gives his master in the afternoon, and it's only to witness the blacksmith botch the finishing. The tempering is badly done: Thorin can see the colour in the iron, knows the temperature isn't right, sees the places where stresses remain. He tries to tell his master, but the latter only silences him with a curt word and an order to set himself at some other urgent work. When the blade is finished, Thorin looks over his shoulder and the weakness in the iron jumps to his eyes; he knows the blade will shatter, knows no dwarf blacksmith would ever think of selling such a misshapen thing. But the master sells it on the spot, and for a hefty price. It's only a plough, but that evening Thorin goes to the inn seething.

She's not here, he's told. She's on water duty, walking back and forth from the river carrying buckets for the baths. So he gets out in the warm summer twilight, finds her and wordlessly helps her. She notices, of course she notices how his lips are drawn thin, how his jaw is set and how his nostrils flare. So she finishes her chores and goes out again, takes him by the hand back to the riverside. They sit there while the night settles and he tells her everything, his horror at the mistreatment of iron making his blood boil again, and she's close to him, sets her hand on his shoulder, then the other on his thigh, talking to him in a soothing voice, trying to calm him, not really understanding, he thinks, why something about a plough should work him into such a state.

But her face is so close to his and her enlarged pupils make her eyes look dark; there's still a bit of pink showing on her lips even in the shadows, and he can feel her breath on his forehead.

And suddenly he finds himself kissing her lips, kissing them with a savage intensity, teeth clattering and strands of hair in the way, his tongue soon thrusting hard into her mouth. There's no tenderness and no care and no skill, he has never done this before, never even really thought of it, but there's urgency and madness and a want right now that needs to be quenched.

But her hands are in his hair, and his on her waist, and she's the one who unbuckles his breeches, and he trusses up her skirt, and there's skin there, his hands are everywhere and they don't even know what they're touching, but her hands are on his and then on his manhood and he's hard oh he's hard and she guides him inside. There's some resistance and she utters a small cry and then there's not and she's warm and she's wet and she's tight and she moves her hips in a broken rhythm that tells him of a desire matching his own, and he thrusts fast and strong and knows he won't last. She moans though he can tell she's trying to keep silent and so he raises his head and takes her mouth again into his and now it's him who groans; but she manages to crook herself down and her teeth are in his beard and how comes it's so enticing and now she's at his ear and her hands are at his nipples and he cups one of her breasts and kneads and fists her hair and then her breath hitches and she shudders violently and he know he's about to spill.

And in one last moves she extricates herself from under him and he comes on her skirt and ruins it, he thinks.

They lie side by side on the grass, one of her naked legs still across his naked thighs, and say nothing. Then she raises herself on her elbows to rise, and he stops her to kiss her again, slow and tender. He feels her smile into his mouth, then she breaks the kiss and sits up, snatches a handful of grass and tries to clean her clothes. He leans over the bank, scoops some water and cleans himself, and then they're both trying to make each other presentable. Finally they both stand, looking each other in the eye but still saying nothing. Then they kiss again, briefly, and part, her to her job at the inn and him to his bed. He can hear the other dwarves singing and realises that the night is young and all that happened took only some minutes – it feels like it was all the time in the world.

Of course he can't sleep that night. Dwarves only love once, or so it was told in the sagas of his childhood and in the chatter of the maids around a young prince – but Thorin hasn't been so sure in his years of exile. There has been precious little love to witness all around, and what the dwarves do on the road with each other isn't likely to be about it. He's found Dwalin, once, his trousers on his ankles and what is strange is that with him was another very male dwarf, and he could just glimpse some rutting and grinding, he thought, before he'd been spotted and everything had halted. Thorin had felt a short pang of jealously, feeling left out and abandoned by his only true friend. He'd asked Dwalin if that was really what he wanted, to bind himself for life to that unknown dwarf, not even of the people of Durin, and in a bound that would always remain secret – Thorin couldn't think of any saga, nor any maid tale, where the two lovers were male. Dwalin had looked at him in a strange sad way and told him that it wasn't at all about that, and there hadn't been a glimpse of that other dwarf afterwards.

So Thorin thinks about what just happened and his hands hovers and he wants to touch himself but he doesn't. Then he tells himself that he wouldn't know. That maybe he'll love only once but this is not it. They're only two strangers finding comfort in each other, and there's no love at all.

The next evening he enters the inn wondering what is going to happen – but it seems that it's only back to normal. She comes with a tankard and sits for a while, he tells her again of the plough and she tells him of a man named Olbel who drinks too much since he lost his right-hand thumb in a woodcutting accident. There's one thing, though: she sits beside him on the bench and not across the table; and he's only too aware of the warmth of her knee against his own. The next day is the same. They only see each other only at the inn, speak of innocent things and Thorin is never quite sure that the way they touch is more than casual or if it's his imagination that makes him see some intent in the contact of their legs or the way their hands nearly touch. He thinks of her in the night, still wanting to touch himself and he doesn't dare because he knows he will moan and wake the others. When he finally falls asleep he dreams of her – a torrid dream and when he wakes he knows he cried out because the others look at him in a strange way. Then he's back to the forge, then back at the inn, and the days stretch into weeks.

Then one late afternoon she's waiting for him in a recess near the forge. He sees her and follows to the backstreets and they nearly can't wait long enough to begin kissing. She stands her back to a wall and bends to him while he's standing on tiptoes and he's really surprised that it doesn't bother him. But then she lets herself slide down to a crouch and their fumbling hands can't work fast enough and he kneels before her and takes her fast and messy against the wall, until at the last moment, like the first time, she rises up and disengages herself and his cock is in her hand and that's when he comes.

It never becomes a routine, because he works hard in the day, she works hard in the evening and both are too tired for anything except sleeping at night. But they still manage to steal a few moments alone, on the river banks or in blind alleys and even once in her small chamber under the roof – there's a bed but they nearly break it and the noise it emits make them vow never to use the place again. Their trysts are mostly the same; he takes her wherever he can, quick and breathless and intense and mostly clothed, no time for exploration or talk, so wild and glorious he can't last long. And there are times when he thinks she doesn't take her pleasure, though he's certain that she matches his desire.

They still meet at the inn, still sit together when the press of customers recedes in the later hours. But now she'll even stay with him when the other dwarves are around. Dwalin is the first to include her in their talk – he's taken Thorin aside at the forge during one of their short rests, has looked into his eyes, smiled in a wistful sort of way, and wished him a measure of peace – and soon the rest of the dwarves take to her. She sings with them, not that Thorin thinks it such an improvement, though she has a nice sense of rhythm, listens to their tales and tells some of her own. After a while, some of the Men notice her mingling with dwarves and she's liked enough that they come nearby, at first listening and later adding stories. The evenings at the inn become warmer as the days outside become shorter and colder.

He certainly can't say they're strangers anymore. He knows her name – Sutho, with that "o" at the end that feels so foreign in a female name. He certainly doesn't try to teach her Khuzdul but he can see she has begun to notice what he can't help shouting in their lovemaking, so that there are a few words she recognises when one of the dwarves takes to cursing and then their eyes meet and it adds a strange sort of intimacy. But though he feels like he wants her and wants her all the time, he looks deep into his soul and doesn't see any wish to bind his life to her nor to build anything with her. Only to have her now by his side or, better, in his arms. Of course, he thinks, he's not in love with her.

It's a strange sort of peace, he tells Dwalin, but it's peace nonetheless.


	2. Chapter 2

Autumn is reaching an end when they manage to get a whole day for themselves. By some miracle, there's nothing to do at the forge – and of course, no wages either. At the inn the days of summer with their endless influx of travellers are long gone and it's no trouble for her to ask for a day off. Dwalin wants to go sparring as they usually do on these occasions, but Thorin says he needs some time alone and leaves without waiting for an answer, getting out of the town to meet her on the moor. He has taken his scabbard and his sword and when she looks hard at him he realises she's never seen him with it – but there's no way he'll go into the wild, even in this very mild wilderness, without a weapon. In this early morning the weather is with them: November's end brings a biting wind but the sun still shines in a sky where only a few white clouds are gathering. So they walk in the fields of old brown heather, climb up the slopes and scale a few high stones; when Thorin takes her hand to hoist her up he doesn't let go afterwards. They sit, up on the hills. The Misty Mountains are at their backs and in front of them, down and far away to the South West, they think they can see the sea.

They kiss, but for once Thorin wants to take his time. He nibbles on her upper lip, feels the tip of her tongue tease him. He makes his mouth soft and pliant and lets her take the lead; she tastes slightly of thyme and all her skin is salty with the perspiration of their climb, and slowly her tongue enters and explores and he lets himself get swallowed in the softness.

When they break the kiss for air they look at each other and maybe it's a first that they take the time to do so. She has strong eyebrows, he sees, not so different from those of his kind – it's endearing on this soft beardless alien face and he traces the eyebrows with one finger. Her jaw, too, is strong, naked and strange as it is, resting perfectly in his large palms. And between these thick eyebrows and the strong jaw there's a surprisingly round small mouth, a tiny nose with flared nostrils, rounded cheeks and of course these eyes. Her hands are on his jaw, too, the fingers lightly raking his beard, which sends shivers to his spine; he thinks he too must look exotic in this country of inevitably close-shaved men.

Then she disengages, spreads her longer legs on the spiky grass and lays her head on his lap. There will be time for lovemaking, later, there will be time and it's marvellous. They both know it, they both want to wait and he can feel the slight tremor of her body against his, making him guess she's as eager as he is. He takes one of her slender woman hands in his large dwarvish one; his thick fingers have a smith's callouses and permanent grime lines, and her thinner ones are a servant's, reddened at the tip, the skin cracked and raw, but what is sees isn't that; he marvels at another of these endearing differences, that she should be so tall and still have hands so much smaller and so delicate. The sun is on them, the wind around them and the solid mountain ground under their entwined bodies, woman and dwarf together and there's no one to judge, no Dwarves to scorn her and no mob of Men to get at him with pitchforks.

He exhales, a prolonged liberating sigh that he didn't know he'd been keeping caged in his chest for so long.

"My prince," she says.

"My princess," he smiles.

As he reclines on the ground he pulls her up until her head is on his chest. She's light, thin boned and frail, a striking contrast with the roots of the Mountains he feels under him, going strong, deep and far, away to the north until somewhere they pass through Moria. This is where he takes his strength from, these cliffs and these peaks and these stones, and he's not been more alive in a long time – even if with the renewed feelings of life comes a terrible welling sadness. He wants to make her understand, tells himself she has a right to know. He speaks very low when he begins and his voice is as deep as the deepest pit in Moria; she shivers with her ear pressed against his torso and he knows how his words must reverberate through his chest. He tells her the old tales, hopes she'll understand the love of his kind for all the stone that grows and changes and takes root in Arda and sometimes crumbles. He tells her of the great caverns of their cities of old and of the long tragedies of their loss. He tries to show her stone and metal and gems as he sees them, things of awe to be crafted and shaped until their true wealth shines through. He doesn't know whether anything he says sounds better than the elucubrations of a fool – but he tries, and it seems to him that her eyes shine wetter.

And then he sighs, and tells her – not of Erebor, which still feels raw and personal and too horrible to share, not of royalty, which would put a barrier between them, not of Durin's people, whose needs weigh on him though he doesn't know how to answer – but of his burdened father and his maddened grandfather, of his ailing mother and his siblings so young and already too serious, of their struggles and their hopes and the weight of responsibility towards them. But she turns her head to him and smiles a poor smile, tells him of her own dead father and her mother who's getting old and who lives in a village a three days walk from here, and how she, too, sends all her wages to her. We truly are a prince and a princess out of the same mold, she says, and she's right.

They never had the time to talk like that, he thinks, not without inn patrons asking for their drinks and fellow dwarves interrupting with a song, and he wants this intimacy of words to last some more. But it's not so simple to open again the tap of easy confessions, and when finally he opens his mouth, it's a big unexpected "why?" that he blurts. He finds to his shame that his ears feel hot and that he's probably blushing, but still gathers the courage to go on: "why are you always pushing me out when I'm about to spill?"

"Don't you know?" she says, watching him incredulously, as if truly it's unbelievable that he doesn't know. And so Thorin hears first about the incredible fertility of the race of Men – though he could have inferred it, he thinks, if he had had any interest in the matter before, from the sheer number of them in spite of so short a lifespan. She says she doesn't want a child with him and of course, of course she doesn't, he doesn't either, he doesn't love her and wouldn't have anything to give to such a child, but – but lovemaking among dwarves finds its peak in the conception of a new life, such a rare and hoped for wonder it is, sometimes decades in the making, and it feels so unnatural and against the highest pleasure to forbid oneself such a hope. Yet it must be a shared hope, Thorin is surprised to discover, or it is no hope at all. So he simply tells her how rare pregnancy is among dwarves and that he'll withdraw as long as this is what she wishes – and saying that he can't help feeling like he's betraying the deepest beliefs of his race.

After that there's a sadness that lingers that he would wish to wipe off but he can't find words for it; yet he's young, and resilient, and the strength of the mountains still backs his own, so he lays her on the ground, braces himself on his arms above her, leans and kisses deep. That kiss would lead them to more, it should, Thorin wants to, but there's a big cold drop of water falling on his neck, and another, and a splatter of drops and suddenly his hair is so drenched the water cascades down its length and falls on her face. She laughs and they look up and behind them the pretty white clouds of the morning have somehow boiled and blown up and grown to fill the sky with a purple-grey darkness. They hear the thunder and already lightning is striking the first ridge just over them.

"There's a cave over there!" she shouts in the howling wind.

While they run Thorin unsheathes his sword, because there's no way to know what danger a hole in the mountains will hide; but this particular cave is nothing larger than an average kitchen, with a smooth dusty ground and a light air draft that seems to have encouraged some previous visitors to build a fireplace in the farthest corner. There aren't any suspicious paw prints on the ground nor bits of rusty armour, nor broken, charred or bitten bones, nor foul Orc graffiti. A good look all around reveals only wood stacked against a sloping wall, a few seats made of large stone slabs, an old blanket in a corner, and the smell of sheep. The sword goes back to its scabbard while Thorin busies himself with starting a fire, and when he's done he turns around and Sutho stands in wet, clingy clothes, already unlacing her upper tunic and taking it off over her head. He unclasps his cloak, lets it fall heavily around his boots, makes one step towards her. She comes by his side to help him out and what begins as a careful unclothing ends in a fevered struggle to get the other naked in the fastest time possible. The leather binding of her skirt is wet and doesn't cooperate and then there's heavy cold wet fabric their numb fingers can't seem to unglue from skin, and meanwhile she's getting lost in the complicated system of sideway buckles holding his surcoat. There's not enough room for both their sets of hands so he only adds to the confusion when he tries to undo a few himself and when finally it comes undone she laughs at the number of layers they still have to peel off his body.

There's fumbling and more laughter and breathless explanations of the dwarves' clothes fastening methods from Thorin, received with perplexity and even more mirth on Sutho's side. But then it's done and it silences them as they stand motionless in the flickering lights of both fire and lightning, beholding each other's nakedness. Thorin usually hates rising his head when he's standing in front of someone taller than him – the latter having happened much more often than he'd like in these past sixteen years, leading him to discover that if he keeps his neck straight and only rises his eyes, the others find themselves bending and curling down and that he can make them _gravitate_ towards him. But here in the intimacy of the cave he does what he'd sworn not to do, his head lifting up and up, so he can take in the whole of her. To him she looks like one of the most adventurous figures of lampworked glass he's seen before the fall of Erebor: long limbs and long waist like stretched translucent glass with that skin so creamy and so lacking in hair, passing seamlessly into the surprise of a full curve and the shock of deep colour. He wonders whether he'd react the same way to a dwarvish female body, not that he's seen so many naked, whether the breasts would look as round and heavy when not framed by so long a torso, whether the deep colour of nipples would contrast that much without such a naked skin around, whether his arousal would be the same, or more, or less, for thicker leg muscles and a more rounded bottom. On her smooth alien body, the dense black curls between her thighs are something familiar and reassuring and _mouthwatering_ and he doesn't want anything more right now than burying his beard in those curls and kissing that mound.

But he still stands and doesn't close the gap, because now that he's fully realised the contrast between a Man and a Dwarf's body, he can't help feeling doubts about his own. He knows what another dwarf would see in him: the nose too narrow and the utilitarian style in his braiding and beard, not at all fitting for nobility; the way he's too thin by Erebor standards but his forge-hardened muscles are well above average; the well-defined legs and the taller size. But he sees her frame like a healthy sapling shooting up to the sky and he knows his own is rooted to the stone, square and stocky and thick and made to endure. He thinks she'll see him as he is, too alien and ungraceful, and that maybe their story together will end here.

Then she's the one to make that last step and her chest with her wonderful heavy breasts rises and falls in fast shallow moves. She sets her hands on his shoulders, smiles a tremulous smile and says: "The shoulders and arms of a blacksmith," and her voice is breathy and nearly choked. With a light pressure there she makes him move a quarter turn, adds: "and the poise and grace of a swordsman," and that's when he realises he's been standing like he often does when he feels threatened or unsure, one shoulder forward in a duellist stance, presenting his profile to the outsider.

Now he faces her and she lets her hands slide on his biceps, falling slowly on her knees in the dust of the cave. "And forearms," she mouths hungrily; "and hands," when he rests his lightly on her crown of dark hair. And then she only says "oh" in a breath and he looks down and she's looking straight ahead, her eyes at the level of his groin and she's giving his arousal a look of pure lust. She leans so close he can feel her breath on his navel, trails her hands down the hair of his belly until he shivers and her lips are red and swollen when she adds them to her hands and then she does what he so wanted to do her just one moment ago, kisses him down there and takes his throbbing length into her mouth.

That she would take the lead in their endeavours is nothing unexpected. But for all her forwardness he wonders if she has done it before, catching the rapid glance she sends up and the frown line on her brow. "You don't –" he begins and would like to say that she doesn't need do it if she doesn't want to, but she plunges and swallows more of him and it feels so good he can only groan. His finger curl on her head and grasp handfuls of hair as he sees himself trying to push her deeper but she leans away against his touch and kisses the tip and it's teasing and maddeningly so. She looks up again, an eyebrow raised as to ask if he enjoys this but he can't find words and answers only with a ragged intake of breath. Then she goes back down, takes him a little deeper and the frown is there again; and she tries for a rhythm and he tries to echo it with a raise of his hips but they're both clumsy and he's not sure how she could ever enjoy this with his cock so far in her throat and her knees in the dirt. But the yellow in her eyes catches the firelight as she again looks him in the eyes and the irises are narrow golden rings around dilated pupils and she finds her rhythm and her hips move in sympathy or desire and there's a sound in her throat like something of joy. It vibrates against him and he tries to tell her to stop or he won't last but he's only moaning and he's trying his best not to choke her as he thrusts in her mouth fast and erratically and she adds her hand to the base of his length and that's when he spills. She keeps her mouth there and swallows, swallows and it's dirty and wrong in every way for this dwarf and it's unbelievably erotic.

The look she raises to his face is one of triumph and he feels an incredible tenderness well in his chest.

He falls to his knees beside her and holds her in his arms, noticing the fast-drying sweat and the cold skin of her shoulders in spite of warm hands and warm lips and the taste of his seed on her. She's still breathing raggedly and her eyes are still dark and he thinks of that shock of curls up her thighs and wants to reciprocate – but not like this, not in the cold and the dust, not with this slightly sordid urgency that has always been their wont until now. So he drives away – she utters a small reproachful moan that does something strange to his groin – and rummages in the discarded clothes until he puts his hands on some of his innermost layers that weren't reached by the rain and sits her on it close to the fire. He smirks as he tells her of the superior clothing habits of Dwarves and makes his movements voluntarily slow and precise as he hangs everything else to dry, retrieves the old blanket in the corner and gives it a good shake, then spreads it near the fire, lays all the dry enough clothes over it and digs for whatever dish- or tablecloth the both of them might have packed with their meal. He finds two dishcloths and a large square of some checkered fabric he adds to his stack, pausing a while to unpack all the more easily eaten items he can find. He plops a dried plum in his mouth and feeds her the others while he drapes the checkered cloth around her shoulders and her expression is part amusement, part anger and part sheer naked _want_.

Finally the only thing that remains to be done is gather her in his arms and lay her on her back on the makeshift couch. He kneels beside her, his hands heavy on her breasts and his mouth hovering over her torso. It might be that he's a little afraid, a little unsure of what he can do her that she'll enjoy, so his lips and hands linger on her mouth and her torso, not so sure of how to descend lower. "Tell me if –" he says in a low growl and she breathes a wordless agreement of her own that hitches in her throat when his beard scrapes across her breast and his lips take her nipple. This makes him find his courage and as he goes down on her with hands and mouth he discovers her shape and her slickness and her taste and it's so glorious he needs to take two steadying breaths not to come again here and then by himself.

They have all the time in the world this afternoon and they take the time to learn. They learn about each other's body and he discovers that she won't suffer her breasts to be petted too long, but will come from mouthing them alone if she's in the mood; he discovers how sensitive his ears can be and how dirty and wild it is when she clutches his hair and pulls his braids enough to undo them. He teases with his mouth and tongue and teeth and hands and hair and she retaliates in kind; he learns about how a woman's pleasure can ignite from its embers and loses count of how many times it does; and in the pride and lust of his youth Thorin sees himself rise and rise again and it feels like he'll never be spent. Times and times again she takes his hand and angles herself and guides him to her own pleasure and together they learn of each other's rhythms; he gets to know what takes him on the brink and how to linger there; he memorises the pearls of sweat on her brow, the widening of her eyes, the curve of her throat, the tip of tongue between her teeth and all those tell-tale signs that she's nearing completion. And in the late afternoon he has learnt to take as much joy in making her reach her peak than in taking his own pleasure.

And finally they're both spent and enjoy this one last pleasure of resting together sprawled in front of the fire, well sheltered from the cold by their mostly dry cloaks, his head in the crook of her shoulder and one of her legs across his calves. Outside in the West the setting sun passes under the wide anvil-shaped clouds and paints everything orange in the cave as they hear the patter of the last drops of rain on the stone of the opening.

Thorin feels Sutho stir, feels her inhale a chestful of air and keep it – then she exhales, breathes again noisily, and says: "Thorin, I. I – do you –?" but she stops and instead lets the tip of her fingers graze the scabbard of his sword that leans nearby on the cave wall. It's an old scraped thing, the gold leaf long gone from the patterns in the leather – but it's been, once, a prince's scabbard.

"Thorin," she begins again, "you and your company of Dwarves, you're not like the usual bands who wander around these parts, are you?" He'd very much like her to let go of this line of thinking so he answers only with a noncommittal grunt. But she's persistent and goes on, talking maybe mostly for herself. "For a start, you're poorer. Grimmer. But infinitely prouder. And well-armed. I've seen dwarves with axes and hammers that would make decent weapons as well as good tools, but you're the first I know who owns a sword. And you look like you could use it."

"Ah," he says, "but the others mostly use axes and hammers, too." He pauses, then says: "Dwalin has two axes," and know this was a mistake.

"Exactly," she answers. "When did I ever see Dwalin chop wood, or do anything of the like with those two axes he never holds openly? Our usual dwarves come with tools that look like they might serve in a fight. Your bunch have weapons."

"Aye," he says because she has just seen his sword, so why deny it. "This here is no letter opener."

She dislodges his head from her shoulder, rolls aside and leans on her elbows, looking him in the eyes. "Will you tell me?" she asks. And when he says nothing, only tilts his head and looks at her through his eyebrows, she goes on: "there have been stories, these past ten years or so, since I was a child. Stories of a great dwarven realm in the East that fell in some sort of fiery cataclysm."

"It was a dragon," he says, and maybe it feels good that she knows this part of his past, finally. "And I was born there, in Erebor. But the story is an evil one, and I don't wish to talk about it." And since it seems that she won't stop pushing, he sits up against the stone wall, pulls her to him until her head rests on his chest, and begins to sing in a low, slightly choked voice, first a song of the greatness of the Erebor of old, then their song of exile and longing and revenge. She lies very still against him and when he's done she remains silent.

They stay like this for a while, neither of them talking, until he feels her shiver and gathers his cloak higher around her shoulders. She turns her head to smile to him and he sees her eyes halt on the clasp of his cloak. The clasp is like the scabbard, something once princely, now only a piece of steel – not silver or mithril, which is probably why it survived among his dwindling possessions – with the etched ornamentation fading a little more each day. The pattern can still be seen, though, elegant, stylised and geometrical after the Erebor fashion. She takes the clasp in her hand, passes a finger over the engraved lines, and says: "and this, now. It's been beautiful once, I guess. Is there a meaning to it?"

She can't leave his past alone, it seems. But Thorin is still wooly-minded from all the love they just made, and his heart is raw with the thought of Erebor. That may be the reason he answers, or perhaps it is just that he thinks that here as everywhere else on the road the name won't have any significance at all. "It's Durin's crest," he says, and thinks she'll be none the wiser for it.

But he's wrong. The folk of Durin were once the Moria Dwarves, and their stories have never ceased to be told all along the Misty Mountains. And Sutho is an inn maid with an interest for tales, a warm heart and a sharp mind. He understands this new mistake as she tears herself from his arms at once and faces him sitting up, braced on her arms. "Durin's crest," she says. "Oh." She smiles at him again, but it's mirthless and depreciative as she adds in a very small voice: "Ha. My prince, I called you. Had I known. Did you – were you making fun of me? My _Prince_?"

The gap between them is deepening with every second he spends without answering. And he can't have that, he can't be left alone again with no one at his side but people looking up, and that ghost of royalty around him that leaves him with all the responsibility and none of the hope. "Sutho, Sutho," he says as he grips her arms in both hands and searches into her eyes. "I never made fun of you. You said it, I'm a pauper without a place to call home. I can't even be a blacksmith in your town, and all I have left of the heirlooms of my house is that clasp, my sword and four silver hair beads that I haven't yet pawned for bread." He'd add a plea for her not to leave him, but his pride is still stronger than his need, and that is something she called, too. But suddenly these last sixteen years are too much to bear, and she's watching him with such sorrowful eyes, and everything comes spilling out of his mouth in a great mess of words, the horror of the dragon fire and the exhaustion of exile, Durin's people scattered everywhere and even the handful still following Thrór and Thráin and himself too much of a responsibility, the fear for the future, the inevitability of revenge and the hopelessness of it.

He goes on for a long time and when he's finished his jaw and neck are so tense they hurt. He realises his cheeks are wet and she's holding him in her arms, smoothing his brow with a hand and kissing his hair lightly. He sighs and there's a hitch in it. "I'm sorry," he says. "For months I have been finding solace in your arms, for months you've given me warmth and pleasure and all I'm giving is the burden of my sorrow for you to help me bear."

She looks at him, then, yellow eyes glinting in the last ray of sun passing through the entrance. "I'll help you bear them willingly," she says. "But Thorin, is there really nothing you would give me? Not even dreams?"

But his jaw is still set in a grim line when he answers: "I'm sorry, my lady. I'm afraid even my dreams are not mine to give."

"My lady," she says. And he can see she's searching in his eyes for any hint of irony. The address wasn't premeditated but she deserves it fully, and he hopes she can see he's in earnest.

"Well," she says with the ghost of a smile. "I guess this is something you're giving me, then."

He makes love to her one last time before they have to climb down. This time he doesn't take his eyes from her; he measures his thrusts and uses his mouth and hands and angles just so and makes it last and finally he brings her close to the edge. He's close, too, but manages to remain there on the brink when she finally explodes in pleasure and she's such a wonderful sight to behold and when he can't take it anymore he withdraws and spills on her belly with a great howl.

There's enough water around the cave that they can clean themselves up, though it's horribly cold, and then they get clothed and begin the descent to the town. His night vision is better than hers so he holds her close, their shoulders touching, and it's another sweeter sort of intimacy. When they can see the shape of the first houses lower down they part with a last kiss. He watches her go first and when she reaches the streets he walks down to the dwarves' lodgings.

It's late and he's been hoping everyone has gone to sleep, but there's Dwalin at the door whittling on a piece of wood. There's relief in Dwalin's eyes when he finally notices Thorin, and maybe something else, some deeper emotion that Thorin can't read. But Dwalin is a dwarf of few words and only says "I can see you didn't forget to take your sword."

"I'm not that much of a fool," answers Thorin, though he privately wonders.

Dwalin produces two pipes from some recess of his clothes, lights one for himself and helps Thorin with the other. They smoke in a companionable silence, and Thorin wonders if he could let Dwalin and all the other dwarves go, could stay with Sutho and work here until some of his talents are acknowledged, become a blacksmith and only that, with an inn maid at his side.

But Dwalin is sitting with him and doesn't press him with questions, and that unassuming silence is exactly what he needs. They exchange a glance and so much passes through it, the strongest friendship and the deepest knowing, the shared memories and Dwalin's unwavering trust and his remaining hope and his incredible reserves of strength that have supported Thorin all these years. He knows, here and then, that what he feels for Sutho will never be a match for the bounds that bind him to his people, and to his friend.


	3. Chapter 3

Here's another chapter, hope you'll enjoy. Did I say I'd be done with one or two chapters more? Well, maybe three, if I manage to refrain from too much dialogue. But I still don't think this will reach the 100,000 words level. Famous last words.

And the story is about to become less pretty, I'm afraid. I can't let the outside world leave them alone for much longer.

-ooOO888OOoo-

"Thorin, is there really nothing you would give me? Not even dreams?"

Sutho's plea echoes in Thorin's mind for the whole of the next day. In the forge his hammer falls to the sound of Not. Even. Dreams! Not. Even. Dreams! Not. Even. Dreams, until he hits too hard and the rhythm changes to No. Love! No. Love! And Thorin wants to scream.

His heart cries with the shame and guilt of having taken so much without anything to give in return – but his body is still in the cave up the moor and if he closes his eyes and bends his head he sees his hair trail across her breasts and caress her belly, he feels his mouth lick her navel and graze her curls and taste her, he feels a stirring in his loins and he wants to take, take and take her again.

"Thorin!" Dwalin whispers urgently. "Pay attention! You're going to hammer a hole in that cauldron!"

Thorin jumps slightly and tries to concentrate on his work, and that's just another layer of shame.

Then comes the evening and how could he not go to the inn? He sees her as soon as he passes the door. She's coming and going between customers and he thinks everyone must see how thoroughly they've made love the day before. She's walking in plain light for everyone to see how the usual straight line of her back is now tempered by a softer curve in her neck. She's walking – he sees now she's walking a little stiffly, as if she were sore, and the sore areas in Thorin's body tingle in sympathy and renewed desire. Her lips are just a touch redder and more swollen than usual, and maybe the skin around it looks abraded. He remembers their passionate kissing and one of his hands goes up to his beard, and that's when she looks up. Her own hand mirrors his, shooting up to touch the pink skin around her mouth.

The shared gesture causes a great warmth to spread inside him and he _smiles_ to her, smiles like he can't remember doing since he's been on the road. Even with the whole width of the crowded room between them he can see that she catches her breath; and then she answers with an immense smile of her own.

That's when he knows what to give her. His dreams are not for her, and he can't give her love, but he can offer her their memories together.

-oOO8OOo-

The next day he rises before the dawn and goes on a little expedition around the town. He knows better than to ask his master for the free use of his forge and there's no way he could afford the cost of even such a small amount of any kind of metal. But he's a pauper prince and she's his pauper lady so a pauper's materials will have to do – what he intends to make will have to acquire another kind of value.

People don't eat a lot of meat in this place, especially not the meat of large animals, but he finally puts his hands on acceptable bone. After that, it's only a matter of letting it simmer, clean it, cut off the appropriate bits and, very painstakingly because he hasn't go the proper tools, carve.

He carves in the evenings, at the inn; he thinks maybe he should do it in secret at their lodgings but he can't, won't deprive himself of her sight. Dwalin takes a look, sits beside him and in his gruff voice asks him whether he intends to use all his stack of bone. Thorin, who is meticulously shaping something no larger than his nail, says that of course he doesn't, and that please, Dwalin can help himself to some. Then Dwalin sets himself to carving some ring ornament and soon Balin joins them. With Balin comes Hlin, who is a woman of their race and it always amuses the company to no end that Men could be so clueless and take her for a He. As for Balin, Thorin knows he's half scandalised that a woman should show herself so to strangers and prostitute her crafting talents and half in awe of her incredible skills to assess the quality and potential of stones, whether costly gemstones or the basest ore.

After a few evenings, the ring of carving dwarves attracts watchers. Sutho hovers around them and from the way she slams his pint before him, Thorin can see that she doesn't appreciate in the slightest that he's surrounded by dwarves so that they can't sit together in peace. But there are others, too, among them children, which is new. And of course, like all children of all races, these two are curious and no inhibitions refrains them from asking: "What are you doing? Is it ivory?"

"Hrmf," mumbles Thorin who can't have a conversation when he's concentrating. "Course not. 's bone."

"That's for your hair? You've already got lots of beads in your hair."

"Hrmfno"

"That's pretty. Is it for your sweetheart then?"

"Hmmmf."

Thankfully, Dwalin comes to his rescue. "Come on, let him work in peace. Don't you see that poor dwarf isn't used to such precise work? If you go on talking while he scratches with that awl, he'll pass it right through his thumb –"

"– Thank you for your commiseration," groans Thorin.

"Especially since he shouldn't be using an awl in the first place. But isn't there somewhere you should be, children? Do your parents know you're here?"

"Of course they do!" says one, probably a boy since he's wearing trousers.

"It's not bedtime yet," says the other, and she should be a girl with that pinafore.

"We want to watch!" they both say.

"It's all right," says Sutho's voice from behind Thorin. "They're Maujor's children. The innkeeper."

Thorin looks up and the innkeeper is indeed over there behind the counter, looking at them. But his expression isn't hostile so Thorin nods in acknowledgement and goes back to his carving.

"Do you want to do more than watching?" he hears Dwalin say. "Care to try yourself at bone shaping?"

"Don't give them an awl," mutters Thorin.

"Surely not. But this ring here needs polishing."

That's how Dwalin gains a following of children for the winter.

-oOO8OOo-

Thorin soon finishes his work and presents it to Sutho one evening as she's again carrying buckets from the river.

"It's not a promise," he says. "Nor a dream. But this I can give to you."

"I hoped it was for me," she simply answers, taking the bracelet and tracing the details of the carved charms with a fingertip. "But come. Help me with the water and I'll be done for the night. Then we can go in my chamber and have a look at your gift in private."

He would have liked a more enthusiastic answer, some appreciation of his craft, but Sutho's eyes are full of promises; he makes a short work of the buckets and they soon find themselves in her room.

"Thorin, this is beautiful," she says and his heart swells with relief. Then there's silence as she singles one charm. "This is a cloud, isn't it, a storm cloud with a lightning bolt? And this on the other end is a tankard, sweetly done, so – so this one must be a plough, and, oh. There's a lantern for this time I the alley, and a fish for that other time on– and even a bed, with a crack," and she eyes her own bed in the corner.

"I've left some room for other charms, if you'd like," he says in a deep voice.

"I'd love to. Will you think of one for what we're about to make?" she whispers, and then he can't answer because his mouth is otherwise occupied.

Thorin has the presence of mind to carry the bedding to the floor, so they don't break anything nor make that much noise. Their lovemaking is more considerate than in the earliest times and more tender than in the cave, but there's no less passion.

She rests in his arms and he wonders if she's falling asleep when she opens her hand and there's the bracelet in it. "What's the cord made of?" she asks, fingering the glossy black twisted strings.

"Hair. I couldn't think of anything else sturdy enough to last."

"Yours?"

"Mine," he says, and doesn't tell of all the ways this would have been understood by a dwarvish lover.

"Can I wear it?" she asks to his stupefaction.

"Of course you can! I made it for you."

"Thorin, people saw you carve these. If I were to wear it openly, there would be gossip. Maybe trouble."

"Would that hurt you?" he asks, and berates himself for not having even thought of that.

"I'm afraid you'd be the one to be hurt."

"Then wear it, my lady. If you wish. If you can. For what we have together, and I'll withstand the hurt."

"Foolish, foolish dwarf." She sighs, then smiles. "I'll wear it. But maybe with long sleeves, though I won't hide it more than that."

"Thorin," she says as once again he thinks she's falling asleep. "Will you stay the night with me?"

But then he stands up and says: "I can't, I–" He doesn't really know why he feels it's impossible. Maybe he doesn't want to fool himself with this idea they could lie and sleep together like husband and wife. Maybe he's just afraid of the commitment. So he finishes only with: "the others will be waiting for me. And I'll have to go to the forge very early, I can't go there from your place."

"Your master is truly a horrible man," she says. He doesn't know if he's hearing scorn in her tone, but what she says is true, and he leaves.

-oOO8OOo-

The first months of winter turn out to be an enchanted time. The mountains behind them turn white with snow but in the town what little falls down soon turns to mud. This combined with the cold puts an end to most of the travelling that has added some animation to the place until late fall, and most outdoor activities seem to be put on hold. Work at the forge becomes very sparse while the inn customers trickle down to a few local patrons who don't tax Sutho too much. But the work at the mine goes on, which is a great opportunity for dwarves who are more used to having to make their coins last during the winter than to earn some more, and so they decide to stay for the season, and maybe for another year.

Thorin jokes that Dwalin could ask for some nursemaid money with all the children trailing after him, but in truth it's a heart-warming sight and one the dwarves find they'd been longing to see for too long. And Thorin has a very personal reason to be thankful to Dwalin: the children are now bedecked in all kinds of bone ornaments and are making more for their parents, so that Sutho's bracelet doesn't stand out so much.

As much as he'd love to, Thorin hasn't got all that free time to go to Sutho. When they're out of work at the forge, he and Dwalin and Ingi, the third blacksmith dwarf, will ask for work at the mine and more often than not there is. Not that any of them likes it, not in these conditions: the mine is a copper mine, something that doesn't give that much profit, and the Men who own it are trying to compensate by asking for a fast production: the dwarves' tunnels have to be no larger than a worker's width and sometimes only high enough for a dwarf to crawl in; the taller Dwalin and Thorin keep bumping their heads and often end working together with Men miners instead. Some of those are nice fellows, Thorin thinks, not really caring about a comrade's size or shape when it comes to sharing a meal or any of the awful homemade brews they come with. But the state of even these larger tunnels is appalling, carved too fast in alternating layers of slate and basalt that he doesn't trust to hold together long. And what little timber there is looks old and feels spongy to the touch.

Still, it pays, and the working day is shorter than at the forge, and all in all he gets to spend more time with Sutho than ever before. The nights fall early and are bitingly cold, so it's not easy to find a place to do more than kissing, but it also means that there's nobody looking at them through the frost-covered windows. And kiss they do, warming each other's hands in each other's clothing, tasting each other until their lips are chapped with more than the cold. They even manage to make love a few times at the back of the inn; mostly a repeat of their early fast and dishevelled bouts, but once ending in Thorin lying flat on his back in the mud with Sutho on top riding him wildly. He's so covered in mud when they're done that time that he goes and convinces Balin to part with a copper piece in order for him to have a bath; and the fact that it's Sutho who brings and pours the water in the bathtub, in a large inn bathroom populated with the other dwarves waiting for their turn feels like very sweet and very prolonged torture. And then they laugh about it and Thorin carves a bathtub-shaped charm.

Soon they become good at disappearing and finding better places for lovemaking; Thorin gets to know all about the backyard stairs that reach close to Sutho's window; he even manages once to smuggle her into the dwarves' one room shack as the others are heading to the inn, but that makes for one of their more uncomfortable moments, him always on the look for one of his comrades going back. A couple of times, they put on all the layers of clothing they can set their hands on and make the climb to their cave, making a trail through the untouched snow.

-oOO8OOo-

For the others, winter is a time of rest and waiting. But for them it's a time for discovering just how far passion can go. And Thorin thinks that for himself, it's a time to discover that he's finally grown up; that maybe his youth spent in walking away from everything, from a lost home and lost hopes and faded dreams, is ending here in something that is not love, not home, not hope, but a place to finally stand and gather his strength and find back his heart. Then he tells all of this to her, and she laughs a slightly brittle laugh and tells him that he's an overdramatic idiot and that they're both still so very young.

-oOO8OOo-

Thorin isn't trying to display this passion for everyone to see. If someone would ask him, he'd even say that of course it has to remain secret. But for one who watches him, knows him and cares for him, the changes are only too evident. And that's why in the deepest winter Balin confronts him.

It's been Thorin's turn to cook at the shack and now it's his turn to do the dishwashing, something he truly hates, especially since it's a sordid affair done outside in freezing water; so he's only relieved when Balin offers to help him. But Balin doesn't look his usual affable self when they kneel side by side in the mud washing the plates.

"What's the matter?" asks Thorin.

"What do you think? You're the matter. You and that _woman_."

"Woman."

"Yes. Woman. As in a female child of Men. What do you think you're doing, Thorin? It's already painful enough to witness Dwalin bed, and I'm being polite, bed every foreign male dwarf he can set his hands on, but at least there's no fear of offspring. Shall I soon have to tell Thrain that the next heir to Durin's throne is a short-lived half-breed begotten through your dalliance with some ignorant Dunland maid?"

Thorin could understand Balin confronting him about bedding a woman of the race of Men; and he even could try to find some coherent arguments to defend Dwalin; but the insult to Sutho and that barb about an offspring, when it's the thing that hurts the most in what he has – or hasn't – with her, are too much and he lashes back: "Who cares for Durin's line these days? And who appointed you my chaperone? Am I asking you about what you're doing with Hlin?"

"What I'm doing with Hlin? What I'm doing with Hlin, who, I may say, is a perfectly respectable Dwarf woman, is courting her in the most respectful way. I offer her what I can make with my own hands and I sing to her and I tell her of a time when I'll have wealth enough to find a home for us and she won't have to pass herself for a male and we can marry. I'm not leaving tracks in the snow for everyone to see and touching her in public rooms and kissing her in back alleys and fucking her in the mud like an animal!"

This only calls for one answer and Thorin hits Balin hard. Soon they're not fucking in the mud but they're fighting in it in earnest. Thorin is the one hitting the most viciously, hitting to inflict pain, hitting to rid himself of all that pent-up hopelessness and soon Balin only defends himself, and then not only that, remaining motionless under the weight of Thorin's body. They're panting hard, and then Thorin exhales and lets go.

"I guess I'll have to pay another copper for a bath," says Balin. "And we can wash our clothes in it, too. Ow!"

"Sorry. Did I break something?" asks Thorin, looking at his bleeding knuckles and maybe hoping that he did cause some hurt.

"No. No, I don't think so. But I'm going to have mighty bruises in the morning," answers Balin as he sits heavily on the frozen ground with his hands pressing on his ribs.

Thorin goes to sit beside him. They both stare at nothing in front of them, gritting their teeth, silent.

Finally, Thorin says: "Balin, you insulted me. And Sutho."

"I did. Apologies. You're not an animal."

"But you're letting the ignorant maid part stand. What bothers you most, Balin? That she's of the race of Men? Or that she's not noble-born? Or is it that we've been fucking, as you said, without a courtship first?"

"Oh, son."

"I'm not your son, and stop playing the wise old man with me. You're only fifteen years older, even if it seems you were born with grey hair."

"It's only fifteen years, Thorin, but that means I remember more of Erebor. Remember things as they should be. Thorin my lad, you were but a child when the dragon came, and what you took with you are a child's memories of wonder. But _I _remember the rules and the rituals and the greatness of our laws, and how that made up so much of our wealth and power."

"Ha. For all the good it does us now."

"Listen to me, lad. Were we still in Erebor, Dwalin would have been groomed to be a lord at your side, and what a mighty lord he'd be about to become, a warrior and a leader of dwarves and ever faithful to you. Had his distaste for the female body revealed itself there too, he'd have been kept occupied, he'd have been found some craft to immerse himself in, and the dalliances would have dwindled to nothing, or at least be kept to a tasteful discretion."

"But do you think that's what he wishes for himself?"

"Maybe not. But you can't say he's happier as he is now. And you, you, my Prince. There would have been a lovely dwarf maiden, someone with a beard of pale gold, or of fiery red, someone, maybe, who would have bested you with a hammer or a harp, who would have captured your attention, and you'd have courted her with music and jewels and craft and this would have been a love the whole realm would have sung of for ever. Not like it is now. Not like that. Alas that you boys had to grow up on the road, and now Dwalin behaves like the basest brute of a soldier and you are losing yourself in that world of Men."

In that world of Men, Thorin has been feeling hopeless. He has felt alien. Sometimes he's even felt scared. But he's not feeling lost and this gives him the strength to say: "We aren't lost, Balin. That's who we are, the dwarves of exile, coarser and dreamless. There isn't a princess of the Dwarves to marry me, and there won't be any more sons of Durin born in the safety and wealth of the Erebor from before the fall. But we're not lost. Dwalin is still by my side and I give him all my friendship and I trust him with my life. And we will make new rules, and new memories, and a new life, for those that are born after us, for Oin and little Gloin your cousins, and all those who still follow us."

"Ah, Thorin. You will make a great king one day, if you can learn to use that temper of yours instead of letting it use you. And if you don't forget your duty somewhere on the road."

"I am not. Will not."

"But that woman. You've given her your craft. And you're bedding her, and don't deny it. What will you do if she burdens you with a child? Do you love her?"

"I don't – don't think so. I feel want, more than that, lust, and I love to have her with me. But my life is not with her. She can't own my heart, and I can't own hers," Thorin says, and why is there such a pain in his chest. "As for a child – would that be such a burden, you think? Would that child, born of a Woman among Men, have to shoulder the responsibility of Durin's folk? I don't know. But I'll tell you this, Balin. It is so, that I'm making love to her. But I'm not begetting children on her."

"You are not? Oh," whispers Balin. And Thorin couldn't say what wins in the expressions of Balin's face between relief and horror at the idea of a love without its ultimate completion.

"Balin?" asks Thorin after a while. "Will you tell Thrain?"

"Maybe I still should. Maybe you're putting us at risk, with that relationship you're not hiding so well. Ah. I won't. I won't, if nobody tells him about, though I won't deny it if he asks about it. And this is as long as you don't forget your duty, my Prince of the house of Durin."

Thorin acknowledges his answer with a nod. And doesn't tell him of these two times when his life might have turned around. Of the two times he came inside her.

_The first time is not so long after they've first been in the cave. Now they make love with more attention for the other's body, and all of this is still so new, the heaviness of her breasts in his hands, the curve of her belly and the softness of it, her own hands trailing in his hair and how his nipples react to her mouth on them, and her playfulness with his beard and her fierceness when suddenly she bites his neck. And suddenly it's too much and he forgets and he spills inside her._

_She swears and runs to the pitcher to wash herself, naked in the cold of her room and as for him he's confused and content and knows he shouldn't be._

_For the next three weeks, until her period finally comes, she won't let him take the lead. She'll have him in her mouth, or in her hand, or she'll ride him so that she's the one who can withdraw. And it's humiliating and dirty and maddening and he can't help asking for more._

_The second time is not so far from now, though they're already sure that she's not with child. He has learnt his lesson by now and is ever careful when he's nearing completion. And that time he knows the pressure is building and he'll have to put out soon, he knows she doesn't wish for a child, but that very idea sends an image in his mind, Sutho standing against him with a growing belly and his own hands on it, and it's so glorious he comes at once._

_She doesn't disengage this time. Doesn't swear. She only looks at him with her eyes very wide, saying nothing. And then she's in his arms and she cries and repeats in a small lost broken voice "don't do it again, Thorin, oh please don't do it again."_

Twice he came inside her, twice it made him hope for a conception, and twice he berated himself for that. So he doesn't tell Balin, and instead says: "About Hlin. She's a wonderful dwarf, and I'm very glad for you both. You have all my best wishes."

"Thank you. And, about that woman of yours. I take back my words. Whatever her birth and her education, she's been a woman worth to want. But come, my Prince, let's finish the dishes and then we can spend half of our fortune for a bath and take care of our bruises. We can tell the others we've been attacked by a particularly vicious plate."

"Aye. Or a fork. Forks can be dangerous. And, Balin? Whatever there is between me and Sutho, it's not finished. Not yet. Don't hope I'll distance myself from her because we had this, hum, discussion."

"Sure, lad. I wouldn't have imagined my power of persuasion would be that great."

-oOO8OOo-

After that, winter could have ended in peace but it ends in tragedy. The days are already a little longer; Sutho points to Thorin the first purple crocuses peeking out of the old brown grass and she makes him crowns out of them, crowns that wilt as soon as they're finished so he tells her it's silly and they should make jewellery out of amethysts instead.

But with the beginnings of thaw come the first travellers and what they bring with them is a plague.

The first hints of illness are nothing, really. A few inn customers begin to cough, and they complain of headache and joint pain. But they're also miners, and miners with bad lungs and bad knees are nothing new.

But two or three days later Balin and Hlin come back from the mine early, supporting a miner easily twice their side between them. He's swaying as he walks and where his skin isn't a greenish shade of pale it's mottled with red dots; and when he lets go of them in the inn, half falling and half sitting, he vomits blood.

The man dies in the night and two more miners die the next day and after that a wave of panic engulfs the town. The travellers leave the place in a hurry, abandoning a body mottled with purpling dots behind them. Everything then halts, the forge and the mine closed as are all the doors in all the houses. Everyone hides, everyone listens for the sound of their chest, scrutinises their skin for any red marks, feels their forehead for any hint of fever. And soon, in spite of all the shunning and the frantic washing, these symptoms spread.

As plagues go, it's not the worst. A lot of those who are touched only develop a raging fever but they don't lose blood, and most of these don't die, though they're left thin and wan and exhausted. But there are still too many corpses, some of them left to rot in the street, whether for fear of catching the disease or because they have no relative left to perform a funeral.

Only the dwarves, who don't fear the diseases of Men, still walk around the deserted town and they end gathering at the inn, which is still warmer and nicer than their shack. And the innkeeper and Sutho are still there in the empty great room, serving them pints and some stew and listening to their songs. The innkeeper won't go to his house for fear of contagion to his family, and Sutho has no other place to go.

Soon Sutho is coughing. "It's nothing," she says at first, "my head doesn't hurt, I must have caught a cold."

But in the evening she faints.

Thorin gathers her in his arms; and to the nod of the innkeeper he climbs the stairs and takes her to her room, and puts her in her bed.

In the night her fever rages high. Thorin tries to uncover her somewhat, but she's shivering so much and he give her back her blanket; he gives her water that she half swallows and half spills on her shirt; he changes her clothes and climbs in the bed close to her and thinks it's such a shame that he's been unclothing her and he's lying close to her and he's finally spending the night with her and she doesn't even know it.

The next day she moans and mumbles and maybe Thorin hears something about love, but he can't be sure and she's delirious. So he keeps on holding her hand and feeding her honeyed water and he's never felt so scared in his life.

This goes on for the next day and night and on the morning of the third day her forehead feels cooler. She opens bruised eyes and he can see that she's watching him. He squeezes her hand and bends to lay a very light kiss on her mouth.

"What are you doing, Thorin," she croaks. "You're going to catch the plague if you keep close to me."

He smiles. "I'm a Dwarf, Sutho. We don't catch Men's diseases. We don't catch so many diseases wherever they come from, at least diseases of the body, you know. My grandfather might be mad, he may have had wound fever once or twice, but he's two hundred and forty five years old and nobody can remember him having ever been physically sick."

"Oh," she says, but she's too tired and reclines back on the pillow. Thorin busies himself with mixing a little more honey with water and adds the juice of a lemon the travellers have left in their rooms.

"Drink," he says. "Your fever has abated but if it behaves like in the other cases it will go back up in the night. But we can use the respite to try to make your body stronger. Do you think you can eat?"

"I'll try," she says, and he goes to find her something.

He finds the innkeeper in the common room.

"How are you?" he asks the Man.

"Fine. Surprisingly fine. I might have coughed some yesterday and thought I had some pain in my shoulders and neck, but nothing came of it, and I have no fever. Maybe I'm immune – though who knows."

"Any news of your children? Wife?"

"No. No, I daren't go and ask. Nobody has come."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. And Sutho?"

"The fever abated this morning, but –"

"Yeah. It's probably going to climb back up soon."

"She's agreed to try to eat something. Would you have anything appropriate?"

"I'll make her gruel."

Her hands are too weak, and she complains of pain in her elbows and wrists, so he feed her the gruel, and is glad to see that she swallows some.

"If it can help," he says, "you have no red spots and you're not bleeding."

"It helps," she says, and then she falls asleep.

She wakes up in the afternoon and the fever is still on the low side. He makes her drink and eat and then what she wants is to talk.

"Thorin," she says, "you told me your grandfather was two hundred and forty five years old. That's true?"

"Yes."

"Is he – is it something exceptional among dwarves? To live so old?"

"Old? Oh, no. He's nearing the time when we begin indeed to become old, but some of us get to live longer, sometimes much longer – that is, when we're not burned by a dragon or slain by orcs or just by men on the road."

"How old are you?"

"Oh, I'm very young. Forty last year."

"Very young? Forty? The innkeeper is forty. I thought we were near the same age, maybe that you were a little younger than me. I thought you were eighteen, maybe twenty."

"And you, how old are you?"

"I'm twenty two. And I hope I'll see twenty three."

Thorin knows Men are short-lived; but he's never measured before what it means in terms of counting the years of one's life, and how Men must have to cram so much live in so short a time.

"I'll see that you make it to twenty three," he says, and he feels that the gap between them must have opened even more.

But she's not done.

"Thorin. Since you don't fear the plague, will you do what you're doing for me for the rest of my people?"

"Hush," he says, "I'm not leaving your side."

"But you have to, you and your friends. Don't you see?" and she's nearly shouting, in that poor creaking voice of hers. "There are bodies to bury outside, that will pollute the water if no one gets to it, and the people who survived are much too weak to do anything. And there are ill people that you could prevent from dying if you help them the way you're helping me. Children. Mothers. Grandfathers. Sweethearts. And there are people who are without news from them, who would need someone to bring them. And food to gather and bring, and animals to feed. You have to help!"

"There are only ten of us. And I don't know what the others will say. There's not much love between Dunland Men and us dwarves."

"But haven't we welcomed you well enough in this town?"

"Welcomed, I don't know. But I, at least, have got a debt, because of you. I'll ask the others."

"Thank you," she says, and then she pants hard and he feels her forehead and is afraid.

"Go now," she adds, "while you still feel you can leave me. Ask them."

He kisses her and goes to find his comrades and explains. As he thought, the enthusiasm isn't overwhelming.

"What do we owe them?" asks Ingi. "Men are only using us and treating us as their dogs, and when that man at the forge becomes too jealous he'll just throw us out without thanks."

"But," says Thorin, "They've let us in at the inn and listened to our songs and sung with us."

"Aye," says Hlin, "but then they're making us work like beasts of burden and deny us even a day of rest."

"We should leave now," says Onar, another of the miner dwarves.

"If we leave right now," says Balin, "nobody in the whole of Dunland will grant us entrance, not with the fear of the plague."

"I will help," rumbles Dwalin, not bothering with arguing and, as always, going straight to the point. "Children are always the first to die in such plagues, and I've grown attached to some in this place. I wish to see how they're doing."

"I'm asking you all to help," says Thorin. Then Balin raises an eyebrow and he nods, or maybe it's a small bow, and the others' bows are unmistakable.

"That's settled, then," says Balin.

The next weeks pass in a blur of exhaustion and horror. Thorin still spends his nights beside Sutho, but during the days he'll go with his comrades. They carry corpses and dig wide collective graves and they're thankful that it's still cold so that the stench is not what it could be. They try to find their way around pigs and sheep and cattle that balk at their unpractised hands. They bring water and make food and support the convalescents and hold the hands of the dying and they wash bloodied sheets and they scrape for willow root and they scourge the whole town for a little more vinegar.

In the middle of that haze there's Dwalin who comes one day with a little body in his arms and a dishevelled worn thin woman in his wake, and he kneels in front of Thorin and his face never wore such an expression of despair, not even sixteen years ago.

"I've fed her, he says, I've held her, I've given her bark and water and she didn't bleed and the fever was gone. What more should I have done? And then she was just too weak and she has just gone off like a candle in the wind."

He lays the small corpse in front of him and one of his large fingers sets on the small bone pendant at the dead girl's neck.

But the woman who came with him swats his hand away and howl: "why are you still alive? Why? Why couldn't you save her like you saved me? Why are you still here when you're only – only a Dwarf, and she was my child!"

She lets herself fall to the ground in front of the girl and cries, and Dwalin stays there as well, his hands on each side of his body and his head held high and he's weeping too. After a while the innkeeper appears and places his hand on his shoulder; he's still hale and has begun to help the dwarves in heir tasks. "Come," he says. "Let her grieve. I for one know you do too."

Then there are more corpses and more illness and vomit and blood and curses, day after day.

Thorin still goes to Sutho's room. Her fever rises and falls in waves and he's sometimes hopeful, and sometimes not. He brings his only book, a cherished memory of Erebor, some poetry about the dragons war in the Grey Mountains he'd been reading, what an irony, the day of the dragon; he reads it to her, even so all these treasures and fires and songs of dire fight must feel like as much nonsense to her. She raises her head in one of her clear-minded days and says: "you'll teach me how to read, won't you, when I'm better?"

That's a promise that he's glad to make her and that he fervently hopes he'll be able to fulfil.

Finally one day she's better, and the fever doesn't come back. She's so weak and so frail and so thin and she barely can holds her arms as she lifts them up to him and he embraces her and doesn't let go and cries in her hair.


	4. Chapter 4

Sutho's healing seems to mark the changing of tide in the plague. Men are still dying, Dwarves are still carrying their corpses to the wide open trenches near the woods; but those who die now are the tired and the weak, the old, the children – and Thorin has to steady Dwalin who nearly falls into the hole as he is, too carefully, laying there another small body. Men and women in their prime, those who were strong before the illness, begin to reappear, staggering in the streets in slow motion, trying to reattach the strings of their past life. Thorin is kicked out by a swine herder who looks like a ghost but still finds the strength to mutter angrily about the inanity of leaving living beasts in the care of dwarves.

Then the deaths trickle to a few and then, one day, to none. The Men who survived laugh and hug and weep; but those who wish to include the Dwarves in their rejoicing are few, much fewer than Thorin would have thought – would have hoped? And these few only come one by one, or stay in the shadow of a doorstep or the privacy of a house when they thank them. There's only Maujor the innkeeper, bolder than most, who's pressing his wife and his two children against his heart in the middle of the street and gestures for Dwalin to come into the embrace.

So the Dwarves look at each other with hollow eyes and gather at the river to try to wash the smell of death out of their hair and clothes.

"When did you last sleep?" Thorin hears Balin ask him through a haze of exhaustion.

"Can't remember," he mumbles back. "I must have dozed off a few times in Sutho's room."

"Well, it doesn't look like it was this week, lad. Come, get back to the shack, you'll sleep there."

Thorin thinks of her and is not so sure the shack is the place where he wants to go. But the Men passing by are sending him strange distant glances and suddenly he knows that it's his kin he needs beside him, and he follows Balin.

-o0O0o-

If Thorin has hoped that holding the town together during the plague would bring the two races closer, he's been wrong. A night's rest didn't change a thing. The distance is still there in the expression of many Men and those don't look closer to giving thanks now than they were the day before.

In the afternoon a group of men show themselves at the shack door. They look thin and ill and their clothes are much too large for their bodies, but they also look official, so the dwarves gather on the threshold.

One man, his clothes as ill-fitting but much wealthier-looking than the others', steps forward, a small leather bag in his hand. He doesn't smile.

"You worked hard burying our dead," he says and swallows as if he tasted something bitter. "I'm told I've Sutho to thank for this."

"Indeed," says Thorin as he would like to remain the Man of all the rest of what they did. "See that you do."

"As the Mayor, it's my duty to pay you for your work. We think that will do it."

The man holds up the leather bag, a purse, rather large, Thorin can now see. He can't bring himself to take it.

They stand face to face for a few heartbeats, the Man taller but grey and bent and maybe – _afraid? _– in front of Thorin, a smaller, wider form standing proud and looking straight ahead. Then the Mayors smirks, lets the purse fall to the ground, and all the Men turn back.

Balin kneels in the mud and takes the purse.

"Balin!" says Thorin.

But Balin is opening the purse. "There's silver," he says. "We need it."

"For that price," says the Mayor over his shoulder, "the Council would like you to also cover the trenches."

Thorin bows his head. "We'll do it."

Thorin climbs the backstairs to Sutho's room late in the evening, hoping she's done with her chores. But of course she hasn't got chores to do, not yet, not with the inn still so empty and her still so weak.

"You've come," she says. "I was afraid you were gone."

"Gone where?"

"Just gone. Thorin, the Mayor came to the inn yesterday. Asked Maujor how much he thought you should be paid. Did he come to you? Were you given thanks?"

"Thanks? No. No thanks, but a purse."

"Did you take it?"

"I – yes, we did."

"You took money? For what I asked you to do?"

"Shouldn't I? They paid well, Sutho, in silver."

"Paid. Money for our sick and our dead. And you let them believe you did it for money? How could you take that purse? Silver or not? Or is silver so dear to you –"

Thorin's head snaps up. "Of course silver is dear to me. I'm a Dwarf, am I not? That's who we are, aren't we, hardworking gold and silver-loving little buggers who will do the basest task for coin?"

His hands are balled in fists and he's just clear-minded enough to let them crash on something hard – the oak beams around the window – and not on a weaker surface where they would make noise or leave a mark. It hurts.

Sutho recoils a little and he thinks she might be afraid. "Thorin," she says. "Maybe it's truly a Dwarf thing, not to be able to refuse money." On the last word her voice hitches and she halts as Thorin can't his face to turn into a menacing scowl. Then she goes on: "that silver, it's driving a wedge between you and my people."

"I wasn't the one who offered it. The wedge was already there," he says through gritted teeth. "What is it? What's the matter with them?" he howls then. "We still stink of their dead and their blood and they flee us like we were the plague itself! Why can't they even give us thanks?"

"But you didn't die," she whispers, a tired, quavering whisper. "None of you did. We, we were dying – afraid – hiding. While Dwarves were strolling in our streets fearing nothing. Touching us, touching fluids, blood, vomit, and not fearing a thing. Another race, stronger than us. Fearsome. Deathless. Alien."

"We're not deathless."

"This is what it feels to me! Your grandfather is two hundred and fifty years old. And you didn't fear the plague." She sighs. "Thorin, the people here only know that you were hale while they thought they were dying. And they saw their loved one die, and then dwarves would come inside their homes to take the bodies away from them, to bury them without even a Man to say the right words. And now you let them think you've done it for silver."

He lets himself fall on his knees near the bed where she's still reclining. "But I _was_ afraid," he says. "Afraid of losing you. And I did it because you asked – because it felt unfair to care for you and not care for your own. And Dwalin did it for the children, and he cried when he set their body in the ground. The others did it because I asked them. Not for money."

"Then I thank you," she says, and he realises that it's the first time this evening that she's looking him in the eyes. "I'm only an inn maid, but in the name of all the people here I thank you."

He bows his head. On his thighs his fists are still closed tight and he makes a conscious effort to open them.

"What's in your hand?" she asks.

He holds up the crumpled leaves and petals. "Primroses. I had picked them up for you. The spring came while you were fighting death."

"What an un-dwarvish thing to do," she says, but she smiles.

"I still prefer gems," he smiles in answer.

"That wedge you talked about," he adds after a while. "Did the plague drive it between us, too?"

"You – you're not human, Thorin. Maybe I didn't see it so clearly before."

Human – it means of the race of Men, but he's heard it used to say kind, compassionate, able of sufficient depth of feelings. He knows he can't hide the pain and it's obvious she sees it as she stretches to take his hand and caress the palm as she picks the wilted flowers.

"I don't really think I know what you're feeling, most of the time," she goes on. "And sometimes you frighten me. And then you surprise me and I find that I still want you with me, you know? Will you stay – I mean, will you stay in this town?"

"I want to. I think we will, though Balin wants to go. He says we've got more than we could have hoped with that silver. Told him it's not enough for what Thrain needs, not quite, and that your fellow citizen have money. If we can get back to work, we might be in for – I don't know. For a while."

-o0O0o-

It turns out they're welcome to get back to work. Or rather, they're urged to go back, and if their employers can't convey warmth they can convey a lot of need. The mine needs to reopen and to gear back into production, and the preparations for spring should have begun one month ago. The forge is suddenly overcrowded with woodsmen needing new axes and ploughmen eager for a wider variety of tools than the Dwarves would ever have thought possible.

Balin, one to work the weaknesses of others to his advantage, negotiates a general raise; and while Thorin sees how it makes the distance grow yet again between them and the Men, he admires his friend's sense of timing and has got to admit the money is welcome. And he's glad that it allows them to stay.

-o0O0o-

They still go to the inn. But if they try to make music there will always be some Man starting to belt a completely different song; the only children daring enough to sit by Dwalin are Maujor's and perhaps one or two of their friends, and Dwalin even goes to the innkeeper one night to ask him if he thinks it's wise. Sutho, too, still sits with them and Thorin can't bring himself to ask her to stop, even when he notices the less-than-friendly glances form a few patrons.

-o0O0o-

She takes him on his word to teach her to read and write and she insists that they do it in the inn common room during the short hour between his leaving from the forge and the influx of customers that mark the end of her free time. But even at that time of the day people are watching them, so that Thorin finally offers to find some other place, maybe her room or their lodgings.

"And what would they say if they saw you come up or me go into the shack?" she asks. "Here they can see what we're doing – and if they don't like me getting a little instruction, they can stuff it!"

So teaching Sutho to read and write under the eyes of everyone is all of what they do together for the longest time. She says she would love to be able to read his book – remembers of being read about dragons during her illness, and in spite of her knowing what a dragon cost him and his whole people, dragons still feel to her like incredible beings out of children's tales.

"Ah," he says, "but my book is written in runes. You live in a world of Men, and Men love everything the Elves use – you should learn _Tengwar_."

"Elves?" she says, and her eyes shine. "You met some?"

He scowls and hopes she can take a clue.

She stays silent for a few heartbeats, and then: "But Dwarves prefer runes, then?"

"We do, for short writings, for stone engraving, even for an everyday-read book like this one. We still fall back to _Tengwar_ for archives and the most learned kind of works."

"I want to learn the runes."

"What about teaching you both?"

And that's what they do, though the wax tablets they use, paper being still so rare and expensive in Dunland, are indeed more suited to the angular runes. She's an average pupil, soon understanding the logic behind the letters but not the need for any kind of spelling beside what she can hear. Thorin is not the best of teachers, his patience already worn thin by his day of work, and how cannot she understand that turning a rune upside down will change its meaning? And he can't help getting lost in watching her hands as they clutch the stylus – too hard – and think those same hands getting lost in his hair or stroking his beard or drawing patterns on his skin or holding his length and – and then he finds that she's been telling him something and he has to make her repeat.

"You know," she's been whispering, very low, "as much as I would love us to be elsewhere doing – well, doing something else," and as she repeats herself her hand moves under the table and lodges itself on his upper thigh, too close, much too close, and how will he manage to make that bulge disappear before he has to leave – and she knows what she's doing, her face doesn't move but he can see it in her eyes with the same dark pupils around which the irises make a golden ring, like too long ago in the cave – "as much as I don't think I'm as skilled with that stylus than with – _other things_" – and her hand creeps a little closer – "I find myself really enjoying that we're doing this. I mean, sharing a goal, building something, working together openly. I could get used to it."

"Ah," he says. "I like it too."

It's true. Were he in love, were she a dwarf maiden to be courted, they'd be at the forge or at some similar place, working together towards a common masterwork. But she's no dwarf, and as for love – there can't be. So they have to content themselves with this small measure of companionship, and if she gets something out of it that she can keep when he has left, then it's all for the best.

-o0O0o-

It takes them the whole of one month and two weeks to fall back into each other's arms. Thorin is genuinely afraid that they'll be seen and doesn't want any harm to come to her; and he thinks – at least, there's a part of him that thinks – that she's not as interested as she used to be, that if she were, she'd have found a way to get to him as she did in the past. He thinks she's afraid, and that she now sees him for what he is – a Dwarf, pure and simple, with a Dwarf's body, too frightening to be desirable. And if he's totally sincere with himself, he also wonders how her body will feel to him now – perhaps like all the others he put in the grave, all too long dangling limbs and frail frames who begin to die as soon as they're born, with their thin bones covered in pale skin not protected with enough hair. It frightens him to think that the plague might have cost him that wonder of desiring her so completely.

But there are so many things that have had Thorin afraid for the last seventeen years, and he's a fighter, someone who was taught from his birth that you don't turn away from your fears; that you know them for what they are and face them and conquer them.

So it's him, one day, who writes a few runes in the wax.

It says, I miss you.

He hears her sharp intake of breath, and then she doesn't look at him but takes the stylus and painstakingly writes under his words, The Red Meado, Daun.

Dawn, Thorin has to admit, is much wiser than late evening as far as prying eyes go, though he'll have to go straight to work afterwards and be careful on the way. And the red meadow isn't far from the last town houses but still hidden behind the river willows, and it's as far as possible from the plague trenches, for which he is ever so thankful.

It's a strange sort of love they make. Thorin doesn't find the courage to look at her body, though his hands do crave the touch; but she's holding them and caressing his fingers as if gauging their thickness, and she doesn't look either. Instead, they gaze into each other's eyes and Thorin never lets go because in the pale light her irises are still the same earthy yellow and she's still Sutho, his own Sutho.

He enters her like that, leaning over her, braced on his elbows with her hands still clutching his on each side of her shoulders. She lies on his cloak and around them the dewy grass is silvery grey in the first light of dawn and he pumps in and out of her with his eyes never leaving hers. It's achingly sweet for the time of two breaths and then it's like a tremor came from the deepest roots of the mountains and it engulfs them both and it's all he's ever needed.

-o0O0o-

It patches something between them, something Thorin didn't know needed mending, and though there are still places in his soul that still feel raw and tender it makes him think he can go on like that.

And so he goes on, walks to the forge everyday feeling the hostile gaze of Men on his back, and knows at the same time he's distancing himself from his kin, doesn't engage with them as he once did, doesn't share their songs as much as before, doesn't care for their tales – because he can see in their eyes all the exhaustion from so much work without thanks, all the fatigue from standing straight against the taunts and the straight-out insults, and he doesn't want to hear them speak of leaving. Not now, not so soon.

-o0O0o-

Then comes the day when he hates himself for not having listened to them.

-o0O0o-

He's at the forge with Dwalin and Ingi and the three of them are working on the same billet; it's still not a master smith's work, but the blacksmith has noticed how sparingly they're able to measure the good steel while the blades made from their work still retain strength, so he's been giving them more leeway of late. Not that he would ever admit to trust his Dwarf journeymen, thinks Thorin, but he certainly knows where his best interest lie. They're still at it in the mid-afternoon and it's a complete surprise to see Sutho barge in the forge – she knows his master for what he is and would never even begin to let him make the connexion between her and the Dwarves.

But she doesn't even heed the blacksmith as she calls: "The mine! There's been a cave-in!"

And Thorin should have known it, and they should have gone away before anything happened.

"When," he only says hoarsly, and "who," because asking why or how would be completely unnecessary.

"Early this morning," she answers, "they forgot –"

"I know," he says and doesn't feel any surprise at all that nobody would tell them, no surprise at all but so much anger. "Anyone out?"

"Men. A few. The cave-in seems to be massive."

The three of them lay down their hammer. There are pickaxes propped against a wall, waiting for their owner to pick them up, and Thorin doesn't need to signal to Dwalin, who helps himself with three of them as they run to the door.

"Wait!" howls their master. "Come back! You're not finished with your work! Thieves!"

Thorin doesn't honour him with an answer, and it's Dwalin who says: "Who cares for the work? It's our kin in there!"

They run.

-ooo000888000ooo-

There are not as many people at the mine entrance as Thorin would have thought. Only one of the mine owners – the other must already have gone, – a few women and even less children, clearly members of the miners' families, three – no, four, there's one half-lying on the ground, dirty and obviously shaken miners, and that's all. Thorin remembers how the majority of the miners are young unmarried men, another good part older bachelors, and how most of the married ones live at the edge of the town. The Mayor isn't here, nor are any important men of the settlement – nor any unimportant ones, either. A cave-in, he realises, is not the absolute catastrophe it would have been among Dwarves, where it would have reached the chore of their community – but had there been only Dwarves, he thinks, this particular cave-in could have been avoided.

One of the miners notice them and hurries towards them in an uneven gait – he's limping, has blood on the torn leg of his trousers.

He can't manage to raise his eyes as he tells them: "your kin are still in. All of them. I'm sorry."

"Where was the cave-in?" asks Dwalin in a voice even rougher than usual, and Thorin knows the big dwarf isn't allowing himself to shout – or cry.

"It's the main tunnel. Nearly the whole of it, I'd say. This morning there was more water than usual at the first joint between the slate and the basalt, and then the slate began to slide, slow, so I ran and grabbed Iain over there who was down and then there was this big wet noise and the tunnel was closed behind us and Iain and me and the others we ran as everything was falling behind, and – and there are only four of us out."

"The main tunnel, you say?" asks Dwalin and the three dwarves have hope in their eyes, because the dwarves' tunnels are further down, deeper, narrower, and as thoroughly shored up as they had time to do. "There might be people behind, alive."

"Maybe they still are, Dwarf," says the owner who has come by, "but even though don't stall your grieving. There must be tons of rock between us and them, and if they're still alive it only will make their death more painful." His shoulders tense, and to Thorin's surprise, he sobs. "My son was deep down this morning. I – don't you think I'd do everything to clear the tunnel out if it were possible?"

"The only way to know if it's possible is to try, says Dwalin," and the three dwarve pick their tools and stride to the collapsed entrance.

-o0O0o-

Neither Ingi, nor Dwalin, nor Thorin have ever done it, young as they were when Erebor was lost; but they've seen others, and remember the tales, and anyway the stone is in their very bones, and who else will be there to help. So they look at each other, breathe, and set their hands on the rock face, listening, opening themselves to the stone, reaching out.

"It's a mess," says Ingi, "the stone is such a mess!"

And that's true, the whole mass of it is a painful stack of wet mud and cracks and faults and rotten rock and unbalanced blocks and Thorin is beginning to wonder if even all the Dwarves' science could have prevented the cave-in.

"Such a shambles," Ingi moans. "I can't see past it." He's crying, openly crying and Thorin remembers he has an uncle down there. "Thorin. Dwalin. You are – your kin once ruled in these mountains. It was told they had them in their bones. Can you – can you feel anything beyond?"

Thorin is about to say that he doesn't, that he's so sorry, that the line of Durin was rousted out of Moria so long ago, when he catches Dwalin's eye and he can't, won't fail Dwalin. He nods, then Dwalin puts his hand over his and they _reach_.

Yes, the slate is a mess of soft rotten sliding stone – but there are veins of ophiolite coursing through it, strong and hale and going down, down, and then up an far away. For a moment it sends his mind reeling, the strength of it, the power there is in following the stone, the lights that ignite when he becomes aware of gems, of ore, of _mithril_ somewhere far away. But beside him stands Dwalin and Dwalin has little interest for mithril, or he doesn't feel the pull as strongly as Thorin, and Dwalin is alive, more alive than any of the stone, and it makes him feel other sparks of _life_, lives down there in the ground. Around these sparks there's emptiness – nothing, and it takes him three heartbeats to realise that this nothing is no-stone, air, place for them to move and to breathe.

"They're alive," he says.

"Yes. Balin was there," says Dwalin, which means he felt much more than Thorin, who just sensed lives, not individuals.

Thorin still feels dazed, at once everywhere in the Mountain and the Mountain everywhere in his bones. He hears himself say: "there was mithril."

"Mithril?" says Dwalin, and he frowns. "I didn't – Thorin, how far did you reach? How deep? Are you all right?"

Thorin breathes. "Deep enough," he says and hopes that the other can't see his trouble. "There are sound stone veins within the slate. I think if we dig alongside them we can get to the miners."

"Hrm. It's our best chance, anyway. Once we reach the ophiolites, we just have to help that rotten slush slide along and progress under the good stone – but the first dozens of yards are going to be hard. There's nothing there to hold a hole in any kind of shape."

"Then we'll have to shore up. It's going to take time"

"Yeah. Let's not waste any, then. Hey!" Dwalin shouts to the small group of Men behind them. "We'll need timber. Anyone got axes?"

"Axes? No – No, I don't think we – it's been a long time since we –"

"Since you shored up anything, eh?" growls Dwalin. "Nevermind. I'll fetch mine." He starts running.

"Is there anything we can do meanwhile?" asks Ingi.

Thorin eyes the collapsed entrance. "Huh. Maybe we could start clearing that. If we build a stone arch, it might hold up?"

"Thorin!" bellows Dwalin who is already far away on the town path. "Don't do anything dumb while I'm away!"

Thorin and Ingi eye each other. "Yeah," says Ingi. "We'd better wait."

"Aye."

-o0O0o-

Waiting is hard. They sit near the rock face and ever so slowly, the Men move near them.

"Dwarf. Are you going to try something?" asks the owner.

"Aye," says Thorin. "There's a sound area we can try to reach and then we'll dig along."

"How do you know? Did you – _change_ the stone somewhat? Was it what you were doing with your hands on it?"

"No," says Thorin. He doesn't stand, doesn't look up. What use would there be to try to make that Man understand, if he doesn't already?

But Ingi, too young, too tense, too frightened Ingi does stand up straight and says "We didn't. But the Mountain, its strength, its bones of stone, they are ours. And the Mountain," he adds in an overdramatic voice, "goes deeper and stronger than you could ever imagine."

This is worse than saying nothing, that emphasising of the strength of the Dwarves, and Thorin wonders if they will ever be able to work again in Dunland after all of this.

But the Men don't look afraid or bewildered – they only look hopeful.

"You'll dig, then?" asks a woman.

"Sure we will," says Ingi.

"Can I dig with you?"

Thorin looks her up and down. She's older than Sutho, frailer if it's possible, her shoulders narrower and her stance more bent. But her jaws are clenched and her hands work-worn and he's rarely seen so much resolve in anyone.

"If you don't get in the way," he says. "Why not."

"We'll be with you. Of course," says one of the miners.

"I'll dig, too. And I think I can find other men in the town to help us." That's the mine owner and Thorin glances at his white soft hands.

"Put on gloves," he says.

-o0O0o-

Dwalin is back with his two battle-axes – and also, Thorin sees, with the innkeeper and three of his friends, all of them carrying more commonplace woodcutting axes.

"Here," says Dwalin, holding out one of his axes to Thorin. "If you but graze the edge on a stone I'll behead you."

-o0O0o-

There's soon an appreciable pile of – too green, too soft – timber. Thorin and Dwalin are still hacking at trees; the men behind them look out of breath and rest on their tool.

"Nice axe," says one of them. "Didn't take you for woodsmen."

"We're not," grumbles Dwalin and he cuts a respectable sapling in one swipe.

"Ah," says the man. "Anyway these axes have a nice edge to them. I couldn't fell such a tree like that."

"Hey," says another, gesturing to Dwalin's bulk. "I should think it's not only the blade. The dwarf's got muscles, he has."

"Hah," says Maujor. "You were always one to notice things like that."

The other man mouth curves in a meandering smile. "That I am."

And Thorin wonders about the glance Dwalin sends the man. "Are you _flirting_?" he mumbles.

"I'm not. He is," whispers Dwalin, and he smirks.

-o0O0o-

Afterwards they begin to dig, all of them, dwarves, miners and miner's wives and miner's children, and townsmen in expensive leather working clothes and gloves.

The dwarves guide them to the less unstable slabs of stone, they stack the timber as well as they can, and even build arches and walls of boulders – but it's still an unforgiving job; it feels that nearly all of what they excavate slides back in, and there's so much water running from the cracks and carrying along so much mud that the dwarves have it up to their knees.

-o0O0o-

Dawn comes and they still haven't reached the good stone. The men have taken to working in shifts, but neither Ingi nor Dwalin nor Thorin can bring themselves to stop.

"There's too much mud," breathes Ingi. "It seems the whole substance of that hill is cascading out."

Thorin nods, allows himself to rest leaning on the tunnel wall. "We have to harness the water, or we won't go anywhere."

"I'll do it!" shouts Ingi and he's already setting himself to cut a diversion into the tunnel wall, his whole body in it, striking with something akin to fury.

"He'll exhaust himself," says Dwalin leaning close to Thorin.

"Yeah. How old is he, do you know?"

"Thirty-two, I think."

"Thirty-two? Mahal. Poor boy."

"Yeah. And his uncle is in there."

"Let's relieve him."

-o0O0o-

When finally the water runs clear in a groove cut on the side of the tunnel, the dwarves are so covered in mud that only their eyes shine though.

"Come out," says a miners' wife. "Eat something."

"But it's already evening!" says Ingi. "They've been inside for one day and a half!"

"Yes," says the woman. "But your friends here tell us they have air, and I know they have food. And I can't imagine they lack water. Come, you need to eat."

"Come, lad," says Dwalin, who was called lad himself not so long ago.

-o0O0o-

They eat standing and walk back in.

-o0O0o-

Excavating goes faster after that. They're finally beside and under the ophiolites, and the stone is holding strong, as if there already were a path there that they only have to clear out. Still, it takes most of the night and the strength of all the people present to dig and dig until finally, under Thorin's pickaxe, there's only air.

"Balin!" he shouts towards the open blackness beyond.

"Thorin. Thank Mahal," echoes Balin's voice, and though there's relief and exhaustion in it, it's not broken and it's still strong.

"You were right," whispers another voice, a Man's voice. "They found us."

Ingi comes behind, sets his lantern aside and helps Thorin enlarge the hole. "Sindri!" he shouts. "Sindri!"

"I'm here, lad!"

Thorin takes the lantern and holds it up. This end of the cave-in formed a small chamber in the stone, with a pyramid of debris in the middle. The furthest part, close to the opening of the dwarves' tunnels, has been reinforced with a complete dry-stone wall leaning on a low stone arch. There's a dwarf leaning on the arch, Ingi's uncle, Sindri.

"Good work you've been doing here," says Thorin.

"Aye. We didn't want any more cave-in beyond this point. The Men helped us for the highest areas, though they could work only as long as we had light."

The mine owner barges in, elbowing Thorin aside. "And my son? Is my son here?"

"He is. Broke his leg, though."

"Thank Aulë."

-o0O0o-

There's a rustle of feet in the tunnel beyond and soon miners begin to appear. There's Rekk with a dirty bandage around his head, and Onar supporting his brother Siar who limps and clutches his left side and breathes with a wheeze. And then Men emerge, bent in two, enough of them for Thorin to think that there might not be as many as he thought crushed under the slate. Some look in a bad shape and one of them, the better quality of his clothes still showing through the mud, leans on the wall, dragging his left leg. "Father," he says as the mine owner rushes to him.

There are still three dwarves missing. "Balin," says Dwalin behind Thorin. "Where's Balin? And Hlin, and Thekk?"

"Dwalin!" calls Balin from the tunnel. "Come help us! Hlin was caught under a boulder. Her legs are – not pretty. We need help moving her."

-o0O0o-

As the miners crawl back to the entrance Thorin strides to catch them up when suddenly he hears a crack – or feels is, he's not sure, something huge beginning to shift.

"Durin's hammer," he swears, "how could we be so dumb?"

The fault is in the ophiolites overhang, close to the place where they first reached it. Earlier this night they were so relieved to find the hard rock that they didn't even shore up anything beyond this point, and now the whole weight of the hill is bearing down on the unbalanced stone and he sees, feels, the cracks deepening and the stone moving.

"Dwalin!" he bellows. "Come quick! Get timber!"

Sure enough, Dwalin rushes past him and they both burst out at the same time, pick up anything still lying on the ground and rush back in.

They wedge the strongest beams as well as they can under the failing stone, but the wood is already bending.

"How many still in?" asks Thorin.

"I don't know," breathes Dwalin. "Some men. Three dwarves."

"The wood's ripping, it's going to fall. Help me hold it in place!"

The two dwarves set themselves at each main beam, their backs on the wood, their shoulders bent under the weight of the ceiling. "Get out, faster!" howls Dwalin.

"We can't!" says an anguished voice inside. But the men stumble out faster, supporting one another; one by one, they pass the dwarves. And finally Thorin can discern the figures of Balin and Thekk, dragging an unmoving form between them; their progress is agonizingly slow, slower and slower, it seems, and Thekk is favouring his left leg.

Dwalin's eyes shine in the dark as he raises them to Thorin and says with so much anguish in his voice: "I should go and help them. They'll never make it in time."

"Go," says Thorin and at once there's so much weight on his shoulders as Dwalin rushes past him with Hlin in his arms and Balin and Thekk hobble on, one supporting the other.

-o0O0o-

Thorin finds himself alone in the darkening tunnel and thinks it might not be such a bad way to die, making one with that deep root of the mountain, being crushed under this glorious heavy stone. And then the wood creaks ominously and it brings him back to his senses as he realises that if he doesn't find a way to disengage himself he won't make it. He wrenches himself apart in a violent move, and nearly thinks he's done it, managed to get away without the stone falling down at once when some rock hits his back, twists him around his arm and shoulder and he's down with something heavy pinning his wrist into the ground.

A great block of basalt has broken down and there's more menacing to follow; but he's only been caught at the edge of it and he's got enough leverage to move the block a tiny amount and retrieve his arm. He's standing on all fours fighting a wave of pain in his shoulder when Dwalin rushes back in, pulls him by his collar and pushes him outside as the overhang comes crashing behind them.

-o0O0o-

They fall sitting under the paling sky, catching their breath.

"The shored up slate held," says Dwalin with a small smile.

"Aye. We're good, when we're not forgetting all we've been taught."

-o0O0o-

Balin comes towards them and Thorin thinks he would stride if he still had the strength. He bumps foreheads with his brother and then turns to Thorin.

To Thorin's surprise, he's looking deeply angry as he says in a controlled voice: "what were you thinking, Thorin son of Thrain, putting your life in danger like that?"

"I thought I was saving your life," answers Thorin from the place where he's sitting, not managing to hide the hurt completely.

Balin opens his mouth, then looks like he's swallowing back what he was about to say and finally, wordlessly, falls on one knee in front of Thorin, bows his head briefly and looks back up.

"Thank you," he says.

Thorin looks around, embarrassed – and then he notices some of the miner folk kneeling down as well in front of Dwalin and himself.

"Stop it," he mutters. "Raise up, Balin. We don't need to make a show with ourselves right now."

He stands up and pulls Balin with him, wincing in the process. Dwalin nods to the miners, briefly but not unkindly, and they stand back up.

"Are you hurt?" asks Balin

"Nothing serious. I dislocated my left shoulder and the forearm hurts, too. But I can move my fingers."

"Let me see."

Balin holds up his arm carefully, probing the wrist which is swelling up spectacularly.

"Ouch."

"Hm. It might be only muscle damage, or you may have a small bone broken somewhere in your wrist. But you're right, it's nothing to worry for. I'll reset your shoulder for you, shall I? Put your hand on my shoulder – sorry for your wrist. Yes, that's it. Now try to relax. Good. Aaaand, now. Move your shoulder up, and back! All right, lad, all right, it's done."

-o0O0o-

They stand side by side, Thorin breathing heavily and trying to master the pain in his arm.

"Thorin," whispers Balin. "When we were buried I felt you reach down, you and Dwalin. You went deep. Did you _feel_ it?"

"What?"

"The _mithril_," says Balin with his eyes strangely distant and unfocused. "_Moria_ mithril, I think."

"I did," says Thorin. But what he felt then was powerful, intimate, and maybe, somehow, unclean. It doesn't feel right to talk about it, so he remains silent after that.

He looks up and sees that a small group of townspeople has come. The newcomers huddle together in the background, not daring to mix as all around Thorin the miners and their families embrace. He sees the woman who asked to work with them; she's hugging a man with dirt all over and blood on the side of his face, but they're both crying and not tears of joy. Another of the miners sees him looking and says "he came back up. But their son didn't."

He glimpses Sutho in the background of the townspeople crowd and as their eyes meet, she sways and has to lean on another woman. For the space of one heartbeat, Thorin wishes she would come forward, take him in her arms like the miners' wives are doing, claim him as hers. And then he knows that she mustn't; that what Men and Dwarves have here this night is but a truce, not a peace – that soon the Men will start remembering their dead instead of rejoicing for the living, and that they'll forget their gratitude to the Dwarves. Sutho must not get associated too much with them, or she'll suffer, he knows it. And as for himself, that's guilt he's feeling – that he didn't listen to his own kin, that he let them work in that tomb of a mine when obviously they were wishing to go. His hours with Sutho feel like they were stolen to the Dwarves, and he knows his duty is to stop distancing himself so much from them.

Sutho moves forward one step, she sees his expression, falters, and remains where she is; then he feels only pain, and doesn't try to guess his own heart any more.

-o0O0o-

Then there's a man, better clothed than most, walking towards them.

"Now that was a fine piece of field healing," says the man.

Balin cracks him one of his spectacular affable smiles and bows. Thorin guesses how much it must cost him, with Hlin still lying senseless not far from here; he wonders if this will be again about monetary retribution.

"I'm Master Thowney the eldest," says the man, and to the blank look of both Balin and Thorin he adds: "mine owner. You saved my nephew's life."

"We saved our kin's life," says Thorin, feeling too raw and too tired to care, waiting for the offer of coin.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

No money, then; and still Thorin doesn't much care. But there _is_ something the Man can do. "We need proper rooms for our wounded," he says. "Warm rooms, and food, and supplies to care for them. Can you give us that?"

"Of course," says the man Thowney. "I'll see to it at once. – And. Ah. It's not the place and time to ask, but – well, my associates and I saw the work you did with the tunnels here and we – we didn't think it possible. We – we need the mine to gear back into production as soon as possible and I'm – I'm prepared to draw a contract. For you to supervise the rebuilding of the main tunnels."

Thorin raises his eyes slowly – but not his head, never his head. "Are you aware of how dangerous it is?"

"I am. As I told you, I didn't think what you did was even possible."

"For the mine to be reasonably sound, it still would take much more time than what you've been used to with those rotten tunnels of yours. And much more money."

The man hangs his head. "We'd pay."

"We wouldn't do it otherwise," says Balin.

"And we're not making promises right now," adds Thorin. "We'll care for our wounded first, and then we'll probably need to consult with others of our kin."

-o0O0o-

"I don't care for what you're doing with the miners, dwarf," says a heavy voice behind them. "But you and the two others owe me two days of work and you'll not miss a third."

Thorin turns his head and sure enough it's the blacksmith. "We don't owe you two days. Only one and a few hours."

"Two days. You didn't finish what you were set to do the day before yesterday. And I'll retain the stolen pickaxes on your wages, since by now they must be lost or unsellable as new. You'll be at the forge in one hour or I'll get you into prison."

Thorin exhales. Why should he care, he thinks? When they have rooms and food promised to them by a powerful man, and the prospect of a _contract_, with the upper hand on the negotiations? Still, the blacksmith has still the power to harm and might even have the law, the law of Men, on his side. Or maybe Thorin does care because this is about blacksmithing, or because it's a question of honour – but Dwalin would probably say it's his pride, say that he won't let anyone tell that he would have left a job undone and a debt, be it for three pickaxes, unpaid.

"You – you can't!" says Sutho who has slipped behind the master. Maujor is on her heels, an expression of disgust on his face. "You can't! They've been saving lives here, they haven't slept for two days, and he's hurt!"

"Oh, but I can," says the blacksmith. "Do you think they'd like prison instead, these thieving dwarves of yours?"

"Sutho," says Thorin and he feels so tired. "He can. Don't, please."

"Three hours," he says to his master. "Please. We need to clean up and eat."

"Two."

Dwalin comes by his side. "Three," he growls. He's strapped his axes on his back and looks effortlessly menacing.

"All right, three."

Thorin knows they're going to pay for the small fright they gave their master but right now he's only relieved that he'll have enough time to crash down. He turns to Ingi.

"Are you with us?" he asks. "You don't have to. You still could stay with the wounded or even leave to Thrain's settlement."

"I'm with you," says Ingi and it looks like it has nothing to do with honour or duty or blacksmithing and all with hero worship.

But there's no worship at all in Dwalin as he says: "are you mad? Forging with that arm of yours?"

"It's the left one. I won't have to raise it high, only to hold the pliers with it. We'll bind the shoulder and wrist tight."

"You're still mad. Come, you both. We have time for a little sleep before we have to go."

-o0O0o-

Four hours later, as he hammers as precisely as he can on a piece of metal, Thorin tells himself that truly he's mad to have agreed to that. The vibrations reverb in his shoulder and send waves of pain up to his skull, and his wrist hurts so fiercely he's not sure he'll be able to hold on the pliers for long enough.

"You all right?" asks Dwalin.

"All right," he echoes and wipes the sweat running in his eyes with his right forearm.

"All right my arse," growls Dwalin.

"I'll hold."

-o0O0o-

They're well into the evening when the master lets them go. Thorin sways and allows himself to lean against Dwalin's shoulder as they walk slowly down the street. A lot of the Men they pass still look elsewhere, but there are a few, more than before the cave-in, who look them in the eyes and nod.

"To bed with you, now," says the other dwarf.

"I need to see the wounded before."

"Thorin –"

"Dwalin, please."

Dwalin remains silent for a few heartbeats. "All right," he says finally. "I want to see them too."

-o0O0o-

Their new lodgings are – well, for these exiles, they're grand. They have a fireplace and a well, each wounded dwarf has a room for themselves and there are real beds, with deep mattresses and pillows and soft covers, for everyone.

They find Balin in Hlin's room.

"How is she?" asks Dwalin.

"Feverish. I still don't know if we should attempt to take off her legs," says his brother, and he's shaking all over.

"It's that bad?"

"I don't know – or maybe I don't want to know. Would you please have a look, Dwalin? I don't trust myself."

Dwalin's hands look impossibly delicate as they undo the splints and peel away the bandages. One of the legs has an open wound, with the white showing inside probably being bone, and both calves are heavily swollen and bruised black, so much that Thorin can only too easily guess at crushed bones inside. But above them the thighs are still pink enough. There aren't any red lines creeping up, and the wound doesn't smell.

"We can wait some more," says Dwalin.

"Thank you, brother."

Balin sits bowed with his head in his hands and Thorin thinks he knows all that the other doesn't say, his anguish and his absolute despair and probably some self-hate to have allowed a situation where a woman, a _woman_ of their race, could have gone outside in the world and found herself in that sordid excuse for a mine.

"Balin," he says, "I promise you we'll soon have enough for a true settlement. Our women won't have to mingle with other races or risk their lives anymore. We'll work as hard as we can, Durin's beard, _I_'ll work as hard as I can and with the money we're earning here and what we can gain from the mining contract, we'll have enough."

Balin looks up and Thorin never saw his eyes so hurt or so bruised-looking.

"But to what price?" he says. "Thorin, you look awful. Go find some rest, or I'll tie you to your bed myself."

"Balin," says again Thorin as he's leaving the room. "Before we draw any contract we'll go tell Thrain. Everyone who wants to quit will be allowed to, and you'll be able to remain there with Hlin if you wish."

-o0O0o-

The next days are the same, muddled in a haze of pain. Thorin wakes and works and tries to find some time to enquire about the other wounded dwarves – Hlin still feverish and not yet coherent, but her legs not hopeless, Thekk and Onar with minor hurts, Siar with cracked ribs and maybe a damaged lung. Then he crashes to bed and the night is entirely too short before he has to raise up the next day. He can see how the others are careful around him, how they give him time and room to heal, how they don't mention any chores in his presence, how Dwalin and Ingi's hammer strokes are three and two for his one. He hopes they can see he's thankful because he's too tired to voice it.

He's got no time to go to the inn, no time for Sutho, no strength either.

-o0O0o-

He's working at the forge and can't say how long it's been since the cave-in – four days? Five? Six? When the third mine owner enters, officially for an enquiry about a bulk command but obviously for a chat with the master.

"Dwarves still at work?" he overhears.

"Yeah. I'd have a lot to tell about their morals but I'll never say they're not hardworking. Even that one with the broken wrist –"

"Yeah. Saw him at the mine the other day – wouldn't have thought he'd be able to hold a hammer the same day. Dwarves don't feel pain same as us. Not enough sensibility, I'd say."

"Sure, in many ways. You know, they remind me a lot of animals. I had a dog, once, a boar hunting dog, he was half gored to death and kept running with the hunt until he fell. Same thing."

"Yet dogs can become vicious."

"That they can. Are you really going to contract with the dwarves?"

"We may. The Thowneys older and younger wish it. And as you said, Dwarves are hardworking."

Dwalin's hammer crashes down so hard Thorin has only barely the time to remove the yellow-hot metal piece at which they're working from the anvil.

"Let it lie," he whispers. "They're not worth it. And don't ruin that blade."

-o0O0o-

When they come back to their rooms afterwards Dwalin is still livid.

"Thorin," he says – not growls, nor bellows, and that he's keeping his voice low tells Thorin about his immense anger. "How long are we still going to stay here? Working for this large piece of dung who doesn't even realise who he's insulting?"

"As long as we need," answers Thorin. "We're not far from the goal Thrain set us."

"But how can you stand that? How can a prince from the line of Durin hear himself called a dog and not answer the challenge?"

"Because it's been a long time since being of the house of Durin had any real meaning? Ah – forget that. I don't know, Dwalin. Or maybe I do know that I don't want things to become even worse than they really are here."

"Why? To be able to stay longer? What for?"

"That contract might buy us the forge Thrain dreams of, and might mean the end of our wandering years."

"Contract. I'll believe it when I see it signed. Thorin, it's not really about the money, is it, it's about that fucking girl of yours."

"About that _what_?"

"That fucking girl of yours, if you didn't hear the first time! And will you be staying behind when we finally bring the money to your father? And tell him the news?"

"I will do no such thing and you're jealous, Dwalin, jealous!"

"Me? Jealous? Of someone of the race of Men? And about you? Don't presume to know what you can't understand, _boy_."

Dwalin is going to hit him, damaged shoulder be damned, Thorin sees it in his eyes. He might deserve it, but Thorin has had more than his share of bumps these last days, so he backs down. Maybe the other senses it, because some of the tension leaves his shoulders.

"To tell you the truth," mumbles Thorin, "I don't understand much of what's been happening in my life lately."

"Yeah. I can see that."

"Still, brother, we'll all be journeying to Thrain's as soon as Hlin and Siar can be moved safely. And then if Thrain thinks it wise, dwarves will be coming back for that mine. _I_ hope to go back – but nobody will be ordered to."

"Do you wish to go back to her?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. For a little while, as long as there's money to make. Not for ever."

Dwalin puts one large hand on nape of Thorin's neck and brings their foreheads slowly together.

"My poor Thorin. You never liked to do things the easy way, did you?"

-o0O0o-

Sutho has probably been trying to visit Thorin from the first day – but it's only much later that he realises it. He's still struggling in that tunnel of work-pain-eat-sleep, he still devotes all the energy he might have left to care for other dwarves, and he's still unable to count the days, but the pain is slowly receding, leaving in its place an immense exhaustion as his body is fighting to mend itself.

It's not surprising, then, that he's already going to sleep as the others head for the inn. He falls into a deep slumber as soon as his head hits the pillow and the female voice he hears only seconds afterwards – or so it seems – feels to him as if it were pulling him out of the deepest, darkest pit. A glance to the window shows him high clouds dyed a deep pink in a dark blue sky, an early evening in this end of May, more time having passed than what he thought.

The female voice is Sutho's, and the dwarf's answering one is Balin, who, as always, stayed with Hlin and seems now to stand guard at the door.

"But why couldn't I come up?" asks Sutho in an exasperated shout. "Maujor gave me my evening off for that very reason! I'm just asking to see him!"

"I don't think it's wise, Woman," answers Balin in a tone colder than Thorin would have ever thought possible. "Not for him, not for you."

"But why? He cared for me, for weeks! In my room! You didn't seem to object then, did you?"

"Stop howling, Woman, or the whole street will know of Thorin's dalliance and of your – your shame –" and Balin's voice falls so low on the last words that Thorin can't understand what he says next.

But Sutho's answer come in loud and clear. "I'm not ashamed!" she, indeed, howls.

Then there's the sound of scrambling feet on the threshold and the bang of a door being violently shut.

"You'll not get further than this hall, foolish woman," growls Balin. "But even if you don't care for your own honour or your safety, you shall not drag my kinsman into the dirt for everyone to hear."

"How is it about honour," says Sutho, somewhat calmer. "I just wish to know he's well enough."

"He is, or he will, if he's let in peace. Truly, Sutho, he's resting now. There's nothing more you could do, and you have my word that he's recovering. Please, I beg you, don't go and wake him – and don't risk him faltering in his duty."

"Duty. Will you pile it on his shoulders until it crushes him down? I – all right. If he's sleeping, I won't disturb him. Will you at least tell him I came, this time?"

"I'll think of it. Good bye, now."

The door opens and shuts and Thorin nearly pushes the covers away to run after her. But his body is clamouring for sleep, and his mind feels too addled to withstand a confrontation with Balin in full moralist mode. So he smothers down the hint of despair that menaces to invade his soul and closes his eyes.

-o0O0o-

But Sutho is nothing if not persistent and the next time he's aware of her she's in his room. The hour is late, much later than last time, and the sky is pitch black outside as he jerks awake, soft lips grazing his own.

In his surprise his hands shoot out and grasp long thin wrists.

"Ow!" She says. "Let go! You're hurting me."

Instead of letting go, he pulls her to him.

"Sutho, what are you doing here? How did you come in?"

"I asked Dwalin. He said he'd help and also that he'd convince Onar to sleep in Siar's room tonight."

"Dwalin? But he doesn't like –"

"Doesn't like me? Maybe. But he likes you well enough."

He feels her breath on his cheeks, warm air thought the hairs of his beard as she answers. Then once more her lips are on his as he pulls her down with a hand on her neck.

"Is it wise?" she has the strength to ask. "Won't you be too exhausted in the morning?"

"To the Void with tomorrow," he growls. "Sutho, my princess, my own, my jewel. I want you."

She's always been passionate, and sometimes she's been wild, and sometimes she's been sweet. But she's never made love to him with such tenderness and care as this night, as she lays him on his good side, makes him enter her and slowly, slowly moves in a rhythm half soothing and half maddening, as she trails her lips on his face and hair and torso and nipples, as he grazes his skin with her fingertips and digs her nails in his back and finally goes back to kiss him deep and full on the mouth as she comes, shuddering to her deepest core and saying his name in a fierce whisper.

He's out of breath though he did very little, but he feels more rested and whole than he did in a long time. As they used to do too long ago, they settle together, his head nested on the hollow of her shoulder and her legs across his.

Thorin would like the moment to last forever, but he knows he has to break it. "Sutho," he says, "you know that I'll have to leave soon."

"No," she says in a wild voice, "I didn't know. How?"

"We'll leave for my father's place as soon as the others are well enough – in a few days, probably. The wounded dwarves will remain there, and I have to tell Thrain about the recent developments."

"But – will you come back?"

In truth, Thorin knows only too well it will depend on Thrain's goodwill, or on the direness of his need for coin – and on whether a least some of the dwarves will still wish to follow Thorin. But what he utters instead of that truth is "Yes, I will," and he tries to remove from his tone all of the uncertainty he feels.

"When?" she says, still in a broken voice.

"I – it's not mine to say."

"Thorin, my – Thorin. If you go back to your own, won't you forget me?"

"I won't. That I can promise."

She doesn't answer. The silence stretches uncomfortably until he feels he has to break it.

"Will you – will you spend the night with me?" he hears himself ask.

The warrior in him knows this is a surrender – would tell him, were he wishing to dig deep enough, that exhaustion and loneliness might have pushed him to concede such an unconditional victory to her. But she says yes and there's no triumph in her voice, only joy, and they fall asleep together.

-o0O0o-

Dwalin wakes them up in the morning and it's not at all what they had intended; there's already some light in the sky and they hear entirely too many sounds in the house.

He's frowning when he asks: "what are you thinking? Balin's already up. Shall we have to help you through the window, Sutho?"

But Thorin is tired of hiding – and just plain tired. "Sutho?" he asks. "Would you care to come down the stairs with me?"

"Thorin." Dwalin looks furious. "Are you claiming her?"

Thorin sighs. "I'm not allowed to do that, am I? I'm only acknowledging what everyone here seems to know – that I'm bedding her."

"And would you come down with him on those terms, Sutho?" asks Dwalin, all anger gone, but something like pity in his eyes.

"I will. I've known those terms for a long time."

"You're courageous, woman."

-o0O0o-

Thorin doesn't invite her to eat, doesn't try to make small talk, doesn't care to explain anything to the dwarves who stare at them as they walk through the common room. But as she's about to open the door he takes her in a fierce embrace and she bends to him and he kisses her deep. Then they part and he only says: "Good bye, Sutho."

"Farewell, Thorin."

-ooo000888000ooo-

A few days later they're ready to go. As they leave the town Thorin looks at his comrades behind him and realises the power has shifted. They're not a ragged band of beggars without any order or rank anymore. They're a company of ten dwarves with the very slight beginning of something that may be wealth between them; they have ponies and a wagon for the wounded, all of these courtesy of the mine owners, and they seem to hold Thorin, with all his imperfections and unnatural tastes, for their leader.

Maybe the change has been a long time coming. Maybe it's because they've been so long in that town, Thorin holding on and holding them to it until some of their skills could be acknowledged – until, at least, they've earned enough money from their work that it can't be ignored. Or maybe it was born of the leading role they had in the dealing with the mine collapse, and of how Thorin found himself at the heart of it. But to him the conscious understanding of it is only a few days old – it began, he thinks, when he found out that he could own to his deviant tastes and still retain the regard of his kin.

And then the task to prepare the move fell to him – and that didn't mean only working the logistics of their travel, but also taking upon himself to deal with the future of their relations with the Men of this town.

The first move he's had to make didn't concern many beside himself, but it was still one of the hardest. He went to his master the blacksmith and negotiated his leave – and his comeback. Dwalin told him they don't have to, that they'll work at the mine, that they shouldn't have to humiliate themselves for that man. But Thorin is a blacksmith at heart and not a stoneworker – and he has to admit that what he did during the cave-in, that reaching that went too far and touched – touched _mithril_, _Khazad-dûm_mithril, and maybe something darker underneath, scared him a little. So he swallowed his pride and counted the days and hours of their year of work, evaluated the price of their productions, the better quality of the outcome, the economy in the materials, and bargained as hard as he could with the blacksmith. And to his surprise he came out with the upper hand. It turns out that the blacksmith has realised he needs them, though he won't admit it in these terms. And if Thorin couldn't get a raise in their wages at least the blacksmith didn't lower them and even didn't completely hide his eagerness to know when they'd come back.

Then Thorin went to Balin, thinking they'd discuss the terms of the contract between them, Balin always having been the negotiator, the businessman and the politician in their small group. But Balin only smiled, and said that he was taking Thorin on his offer to remain at Thrain's while Hlin would recover – and still with her two legs – and that Thorin should be the one to work at that contract since he'd been the one to have agreed to it, that time at the mine, and would be the one to lead back the dwarves to it, Thrain's willing. Thorin told him he's too young, and Balin told him princes are never too young.

So he drafted the contract as well as he could, trying to remember the lessons given to an heir of the strongest dwarf realm of Arda an eternity ago; he didn't put his best clothes, because he hasn't got any – but he put on his best regal expression and walked as majestically as he could to the wealthiest part of the town. The negotiations were awkward, two of the owners never looking him in the eye – but he has now the satisfaction of knowing that by the end, the one who would liken him to a dog had his eyes on the ground and the posture of one utterly defeated. The contract is a good one; one, even, that will free them from their wandering and offer Thrain his forge and the others the means to settle – for some years, a decade, maybe, but that's good.

Now, thinks Thorin, Thrain – and maybe Thror – have to agree to it, and that may not be the easiest part.


	5. Chapter 5

A few days later they're ready to go. As they leave the town Thorin looks at his comrades behind him and realises how far the power has shifted. They're not a ragged band of beggars without any order or rank anymore. They're a company of ten dwarves with the very slight beginning of something that may be wealth between them; they have ponies and a wagon for the wounded, all of these courtesy of the mine owners, and they seem to hold Thorin, with all his imperfections and unnatural tastes, for their leader.

Maybe the change has been a long time coming. Maybe it's because they've been so long in that town, Thorin holding on and holding them to it until some of their skills could be acknowledged – until, at least, they've earned enough money from their work that it can't be ignored. Or maybe it was born of the leading role they had in the dealing with the mine collapse, and of how Thorin found himself at the heart of it.

But to him the conscious understanding of it is only a few days old – it began, he thinks, when he found out that he could own to his deviant tastes and still retain the regard of his kin. And then the task to prepare the move fell to him – and that didn't mean only working the logistics of their travel, but also taking upon himself to deal with the future of their relations with the Men of this town.

The first move he's had to make didn't concern many beside himself, but it was still one of the hardest. He went to his master the blacksmith and tried to find a way to announce their leave while making it legal – and while keeping a door open for them to get back. Dwalin tells him they don't have to, that anyway their place will be at the mine – and even more than any others, it will be Thorin's place, who can't ask the others to come back there if he doesn't himself, and who's the one having the trust of the mine owners. But Thorin is a blacksmith at heart, not a stoneworker – and he has to admit that what he did during the cave-in, that reaching that went too far and touched – touched _mithril_, and maybe something darker underneath, left him frazzled, and maybe even a little scared. He'll work at the mine, he has to – but maybe, after a while, when things are settled, he might go back to the forge.

So he prepared himself as well as he could, setting the days and hours of their year of work against the hours paid, evaluating the selling price of their productions, the better quality of the outcome, the economy in the materials, swallowed his pride and negociated as hard as he could with the blacksmith. The man, of course, would never have told him he needs them – but he couldn't completely hide his eagerness to know whether, and when, they'd come back, and to his surprise Thorin went out with some sort of bargain: an authorisation to leave, which is already something he wasn't so sure he'd get easily, the payment of their last days of work, and the vague promise of equivalent wages should they find themselves working at the forge in an undefined future.

-oo00800oo-

Then, only two days ago, Thorin went to Balin, thinking they'd discuss the terms of the mining contract between them, Balin having always been the negotiator, the businessman and the politician in their small group. But Balin only smiled, and said that he was taking Thorin on his offer to remain at Thraín's while Hlin would recover – and still with her two legs – and that Thorin should be the one to work at that contract since he'd been the one to have agreed to it that time at the mine, and would be the one to lead back the dwarves to it, Thraín's willing. Thorin told him he's too young, and Balin told him princes are never too young.

So he drafted the contract as well as he could, trying to remember the lessons given to an heir of the strongest dwarf realm of Arda an eternity ago; he didn't put his best clothes, because he hasn't got any – but he put on his best regal expression and, feeling horribly naked, walked as majestically as he could to the wealthiest part of the town. The negotiations were awkward, two of the owners never looking him in the eye – but he has now the satisfaction of knowing that by the end, the one who would liken him to a dog had his eyes on the ground and the posture of one utterly defeated. The contract is a good one; one, even, that will free them from their wandering and offer Thraín his forge and the others the means to settle – for some years, a decade, maybe, but that's good.

Now, thinks Thorin, Thraín – and maybe Thrór – have to agree to it, and that may not be the easiest part.

-oo00800oo-

Even with the wounded the journey isn't a long one – only four days of driving and riding north alongside the western slopes of the Misty Mountains. Thraín's choice for a settlement is one a dwarf could love: in the northernmost part of Dunland, close, oh so close from Hollin of old and the doors of Moria – though they're not to be seen from there – and nested at the foot of the mountain against a strong granite cliff. As they're nearing it Thorin's heart swells as he didn't think it would; it's not home and never will be, but the peaks above the cliff are still capped with snow in this beginning of June, like the Erebor of old would have been. And the dwellings of the dwarves feel incredibly familiar and real and _right_ after so much time spent around the wooden architecture and frail rubblework masonry of the Dunland towns. The place is never going to be much more than what it already is, but it's still dwarven-made: strong boulders precisely carved and assembled, solid walls firmly rooted in the rock, houses that begin above ground and go deep enough into the granite below; and even, here and there, a few adornments carved in the stone, in that strong geometrical ereborian style he didn't know he missed so much.

He exhales and dismounts, eager to feel the unyielding rocky ground beneath his feet.

"Thorin!" someone shouts.

He looks up. "Frerin!"

His brother all but falls into his arms. Then Thorin pushes him back at arms lengths. "Durin's hammer, little brother, what a great beard you have now! Nearly grown up, are we?"

"Aye. Nearly. And father still won't let me leave, though _you_'ve been on the roads all these years. But you look older, Thorin. Thinner and tired and grimmer. And as for your beard, one could call it a Man's, cropped short like that – you still don't give a damn for how nobility should groom theirs, don't you?"

"Pshaw. Nobility. And a long beard goes in the way at the forge."

"How did it go, brother? How much?"

Thorin grins widely. "A lot, my brother. _A lot_. Nearly enough, and soon, _more_ than enough."

"Really? Then come tell Thraín!"

"I think I'll see Mother first. How is she?"

But Frerin's smile disappears so abruptly that he doesn't push when the other doesn't answer.

"I'll see her at once, then."

"Thorin."

"What?"

"Go see Thrór first. He's still the king."

"And?"

"And – you know. It will make things easier for Thraín."

"Aye. I'll see to the wounded and then go to him."

-oo00800oo-

Thrór, of course, is only found in the deepest of their underground galleries. His suite of many rooms is lit with a great wealth of oil lamps all burning together in a parody of the Erebor halls illuminations and Thorin winces thinking of how much is must cost. Thrór even had a throne made in the largest room, a monstrosity carved out of stone that is entirely too large for the place.

But he's not sitting on it when Thorin enters. He's standing on the steps, mumbling incoherent strings of khuzdul and turning something that glints a pure metallic white in his hands – mithril, for sure, and Thorin knows at once what it is, the last of their valuable jewellery, one of a set of mithril armbands that Thraín has been trying to pry away from Thrór's hands and sell for seventeen years, to no avail. Thraín must have tried again, then.

Thrór doesn't notice him at all and Thorin halts on the doorstep, something as cold as a grave clawing at his heart. Thrór, at two hundred and forty five years old, is still imposing to behold. His beard is still as luxuriant as ever, still the silver it was in the last years of Erebor, still marvellously braided, if not with precious jewels then at least with the intricacy becoming his rank. But what feels the most absurdly painful to behold is Thrór's build, his large and muscular shoulders, his stance still so much like a warrior's, his proud bearing, his tall size – so like Thorin's own, he's always been told. Then, finally, Thrór rises his head and sees his grandson, and his eyes though of a slightly lighter blue than Thorin's remind the younger dwarf of his own so much that the madness in them is even more striking.

"Ah, grandson," sneers Thrór. "So you've come back at least from prostituting your skills for Men?"

"I did, my king."

"_How much_?"

"More than we hoped. I'll – the money is still in the saddlebags, I'll show you if you wish."

"Don't bother. Is there any gold in it?"

"Gold? No. The Men of Dunland don't have much gold running around." But Thorin hates the scorn in Thrór's eyes and his pride compels him to add: "there's silver, though, and more to come."

But this is a mistake, of course. The scorn in Thrór's tone matches the one in his eyes as he utters: "these Men of yours deceived you, then. They do have a little gold, but they don't give it to wanderers or beggars. Keep your pocket money to yourself! It still couldn't buy one of the gemstones in my armband."

Thorin bows deep and hopes his bent head will conceal his sorrow. "May I take your leave now, my king?"

But Thrór is lost again in the contemplation of mithril. "Of course, of course," he mumbles. "And do come back if you manage to find some gold, grandson."

-oo00800oo-

How any of this could help Thraín, as Frerin hinted, Thorin doesn't know. Maybe he saved Thraín the chore of informing the king? But all that Thorin gained for himself is an already sombre mood as he strides towards his mother's room. As her father-in-law, she resides in the deeper galleries, and she leaves them even more unfrequently. But in her case that's because she needs the constant mild temperature and the well-adjusted humidity. Her lungs were burnt when she breathed to close to the dragon and she never recovered enough to withstand the dryness and the dirt of the air above ground easily.

"Thorin? Oh Thorin!" she whispers breathlessly as he knocks and crosses the room to her reclining chair. He embraces her with all the strength he dares and the words 'I didn't think I'd see you again' remain unsaid from both of them. The rattle in her breathing is more pronounced than ever and her wrists feel even frailer than Sutho's.

"My son," she says with a small proud smile, "you look grown. Are you well?"

"And you, Mother?"

"Ah – you know. Still alive."

It's unfair. She should be at the forge besting Thraín, she should be singing at the top of her lungs over the accompaniment of her own cello, she should be standing with all the strength of her one hundred and fifty years. She shouldn't be this spent ghost with a few wispy white hair for a beard and eyes so sunken and so clouded nobody would ever guess they were once as black and shining as onyx.

"Son. Don't feel so sad. The Maker still gave me seventeen years to watch my children grow, and that's all I could wish for. But enough of me. Don't you want to tell me anything about you? Frerin told me that things went well."

"They did, Mother."

"But you don't look so sure. Will you tell me, Thorin?"

Even hoarse and broken, her voice still sounds like his Mama's from so long ago, when she was guessing with infinite tenderness at some stupid naughty thing he was trying to hide.

"Mama," he blurts before he can catch himself, "in Erebor they used to say that dwarves love only once. Is it true?"

"Oh." Her expression shifts, becomes at once knowing and deeply sad, and he wonders if someone already told her. She doesn't ask him why nor whether he is, indeed, in love.

"It's such a tragedy that you grew up on the road," she says instead. "Our bodies are grown at twenty and we can pass for adults in a world of Men, working and fighting as the best of them, if not as the best of us – but they don't understand, those Men, how much learning and shaping of the mind and heart a young dwarf still needs, and they may break him with their mature talk and their promiscuity and their fickle hearts." She coughs. "Pass me my draught, will you? I'll try to answer your question, but I'm sure I'll talk too much."

"Should you?"

"Yes, Thorin. It's important. You're important." She pauses, lost in her thoughts, then begins again. "Love, my son, love is burning and passion and owning and be owned. Mahal knows, Thorin, that I still love and desire and _want_ my husband after all these years, and I hate my body a little more each day because I can't take him to my bed and make love to him as fiercely as we used to do – and you're blushing, boy. You never used to. Has it become somewhat more real, what I'm talking about? Has something ignited in you?"

He only lowers his eyes, but she knows, of course she knows.

"Well, we're lucky in that, us dwarves. The flame of the first passion never wanes in us, once we truly know we are in love. I'm told that it isn't the same in Men, that the arousal and desire goes after a while – so maybe that's why it is said that they are fickle in their attachments, not able to love deeply for long – even what passes for long in their short lives. It must be hard, keeping a partner in your heart when your body grows cold. But we, we know how to love, fiercely and jealously. No one who's been chosen by another can doubt they'll ever be owned by their mate. Thraín is my own, and I'll fight anyone who tries to take him from me, as well as he'd kill anyone approaching me."

Thorin knows his jaws are clenched, knows he's looking at her with entirely too wide eyes, knows she can read his heart like an open book. But her gaze is far away, suddenly, and her voice loses her strength as she says: "but do we love only once? It was easy to say so in Erebor when we lived long and hadn't got any enemies. But now I've seen a lot of tragedies and I can say – I think I can say that the memory, even the physical memory of a first love never goes. But there are hearts that are big and strong enough for more within the span of one life, and truly, who could deny them such a marvel, to love twice? Though it must be hard for the second one, sharing with the dead. And standing under the judgement of others."

"But how do you know it _is_ love?"

"Again, it would have been easy in Erebor – at least among ourselves. You'd never allow yourself anything physical before you were sure – and if you weren't strong enough, there were always the laws and the rules and the stories and the public to hold you to our standards. But since the Disaster – there have been entirely too many sins on the road. Dwarves seeking promiscuity for the sake of reassurance, dwarves looking to the only comfort they could take or give, dwarves, young dwarves, taking the habits of their Men neighbours for their own, learning in their worst taverns or even in their beds. Dwarves of all kind, and even those of noble birth, sadly, are not immune. I can't say I understand, though I guess where it all came from, and I pity them – because how can they remain with the ashes of their passion when the memory of the person they took it from doesn't have any meaning? But I'm frightening you. What about you, my Thorin? Are you in love?"

"I – I don't know. I think I can't."

"You can't. It doesn't work like that, my poor, poor lost boy."

Poor. Lost. Dwalin has called him poor, and Balin has deemed him lost, and he's denied being any of that. Sutho's body and touch still feel real in his mind and even if it's but comfort it's not the taste of ashes he feels in his mouth.

"I'm not lost, Mother," he says, standing straight.

"Aren't you?" she whispers so low he nearly doesn't hear her. "Aren't you wishing, right now, that you were back with her, that you could make yourself at home in her place of Men? Aren't you thinking of her rounding belly, of your hands on it, of children of awkward heights and beards growing between you both? Aren't you thinking of all the ways you could make it work, letting go of your heritage for a smithy and a warm hearth?"

"No. No, mother. I told Balin, I'm telling you now. I'm not forsaking my kin, I'm not letting go of my duty. My place is with the dwarves."

"Look at me, Thorin. Look at me." She peers in his eyes with her clouded ones, long and hard, clutching his forearms with a strength he didn't know she still had. Then she exhales, a long, rattling breath. "You're telling the truth. I wouldn't have thought, but you're not lying. Thorin, I'm so proud of you. I pity you, because you are going to suffer, but I'm so proud of you! We raised you well, my son, that you couldn't let go of your duty in front of so mighty an enemy."

"You did, Mother," he only says, but he can't find a smile in answer to her own and for the first time, his mouth tastes indeed of ashes.

"Thorin," she says after a while, "I must warn you that you're going to have a hard time with Thraín right now. Maybe you shouldn't ask to go back over there."

"I still will, though."

"Said like a true pig-headed son of Durin," she says with a smile which makes it easy now to smile back."

"I love you, Mama." And this love at least is an easy one.

"I love you, my son."

-oo00800oo-

His mother's warning makes Thorin loathe to see his father at once, though he knows it only gives the latter more time to get perfectly acquainted with the situation. Instead, he finds his feet leading him to the small forge that's slowly taking shape in one of the sturdy granite buildings. Most of the tools are old things, what they had with them by chance when Erebor fell, and the amount of raw metal they could gather is laughingly small – but it's about to change, Thorin knows, if only he can convince Thraín give them his blessing to go back to a mining town where they'll be humiliated yet more, work at tasks that are so much lower than their true skill, and where his son will forget yet more of what it is to be a dwarf; but also, where they'll finally get enough money to supply themselves with what they need.

The forge is ringing with someone's hammer strokes and he suddenly fears that Thraín is at work; but the dwarf he sees as he passes the threshold is much older, and Thorin feels at once a great relief, a great love, and a sharp pain. It's Nár who is working at a dagger with precise, skilled movements, Thrór's old friend, councillor, and shield brother; Nár, who held Thorin's hand around a hammer, guided his strokes, and taught him more about forging than Thrór or even Thraín ever did; Nár, who looks grey and bent now, caught up by old age at last though he's younger than his king by a decade. How tragic, thinks Thorin, that Thrór would still look so strong in his madness, and Nár, with his sharp mind and kind heart, would be so close to death.

But Nár looks like he's making the most of the life he's still got, and the dagger he holds in his hands looks as deadly and gorgeous as his work of old. He finally looks up from his anvil and his smile at Thorin isn't marred by any judgement nor hurt nor greed.

He lays his work carefully on the bench because he's still Nár and strides to the door. "Thorin, my boy! You're here! How wonderful!"

"Nár," Thorin says as they bump foreheads with still an appreciable strength from the older dwarf.

They stand wordlessly for a while, face to face and hands in hands, the old grey dwarf once slightly taller but now bent smaller and the young dark-haired one standing straight and proud and full of sorrow.

"I'm glad to see that your hands still have the grime and calluses of a hard-working, hard-fighting dwarf," says Nár finally, "That's enough to be proud of, whatever else weighs on your mind – no, don't tell me. Come, sit with me for a while, you'll gather your wits and I'll gather my breath. Got your pipe?"

And so they sit on the threshold and smoke companionably, gazing on the first hints of summer on the mountains, the two young common eagles not so far above their head so awkward in their circling and with still so much white on their wings, the small high clouds crowning the highest peaks, the air above the dark stone shimmering in the heat. It does more to close the wounds in Thorin's soul than any deep conversation they could have, and he remembers again why he loves Nár so much.

"Thorin," says Nár. "Thrór wasn't always so far gone. He talked about you proudly, once. He loved you. You – you should trust and love your father, while he still can return it."

-oo00800oo-

Nár's words do help, thinks Thorin as he approaches Thraín who stands in the yard among the new ponies and the heaped luggage, in deep conversation with Balin. Because it makes him see his father not as the judge of his son's mistakes but as the proud leader he still is, bearing himself with a majesty that doesn't feel as refined and haughty as Thrór's, but is deeply grounded in a bottomless reserve of strength. Thraín is as wide as he's tall and feels like a true son of the earth and stone, powerful and made to last and lead and forever lend his strength to those who need it. And at that moment Thorin couldn't love him more.

"Father!" he feels himself exclaim with something like true joy in his tone.

And for a fleeting moment he can see Thraín's expression mirror his own, the older dwarf's whole body surging forward as he were about to open his arms. "Thorin," he says, but though his voice is still warm his face is already guarded. "I've been acquainting myself with your – endeavours in Dunland. Balin? Thank you for your help, it's been most useful."

On clue, Balin bows and retreats, and Thraín's face becomes colder.

"I'm told you had two dwarves severely wounded, son? In a cave-in?"

Thorin keeps his eyes level, because he deserves the scolding and is prepared to take it. "I – couldn't prevent it. I should have listened to them when they –"

"But you didn't. And remained in that Valar-forsaken place. And earned money. And saved their lives, I'm told – though Hlin might not walk without a limp ever more." He clears his throat and goes on. "Balin told me you and Dwalin and that child Ingi had to reach into the stone. That he felt you reach deep. You were never taught that properly, were you? It's not something a boy of twenty could have been trusted with in Erebor."

Thorin shakes his head wordlessly and suddenly Thraín howls: "Do you realise how dangerous it is? What if Dwalin hadn't come to be, by chance, by pure chance, I tell you, the perfect ward to your seeking? What if you had lost yourself into the stone? What if you hadn't been able to resist the calling? We're already losing Thrór, Thorin! Would you have the people of Durin dealing with _two_ gold-mad lords?"

Thorin thinks of the call of the stone back there. He remembers that moment when all the weight of the mountain was on his shoulders, and the peace he felt, the rightness of it. He thinks that had he let himself drift into that feeling – had he lost himself into the stone, he'd have been dead, not gold-mad. But there's another thing, something that felt important, that Balin felt also, so he only says: "Gold? There was mithril."

"Then you sensed it too. You went far enough. Sometimes I tell myself that we shouldn't stay so close to Khazad-dûm. It's – tempting. So tempting. But as for your – adventures. It wouldn't have arrived at all if you had listened to Balin. If you had left earlier. How could you let your comrades work into such a tomb of a mine? Thorin. You're of age, now. And with Thrór ailing, I need you – I desperately need to know I can trust you and your decisions, and right now I'm really not sure I can."

"What of the mine? It's bad, but not worse than most of the Men-worked ones we've been before, including some you led us to."

"But this was your decision. What I'm questioning is perhaps not that you made them keep on working, but why! Maybe deciding to stay was right, but at the moment I'm really not sure you made them stay for the right reason. There are some in your company that wonder the same thing – that wonder if you were, are, still thinking as a Dwarf."

Thorin can't help the violent clenching of his fists, and the slight turn of his eyes towards the place where Balin stood only moments before.

"And no," Thraín goes on, "contrary to what you seem to think it's not Balin. Balin only said that you may have strange taste in women but might be shaping up like a leader. I myself still need to be convinced."

"Father, I –"

"Come inside, son. There are things I'd prefer to discuss with you in private."

-oo00800oo-

Thraín takes Thorin by his bad arm and the latter winces – but if the older dwarf notices it he doesn't lighten his grip and walks his son into the nearest empty room.

He doesn't let go of the arm as he says: "Thorin. So that it is clear between us, I don't give a damn about that human whore you found yourself there."

Thorin can't help the growl that escapes from his chest. "She's not a whore!"

"And what else? You're paying her in bone trinkets and maybe in the dazzling of a prince's name, take all you can from her and in the end will leave her with nothing. Balin told me you had no intention to father a bastard and I believe him."

"It's – not like that!" And Thorin thinks of all that Sutho taught him about his own heart and his own body – and more than that, how she's become his guide in this bewildering world of Men they're now living in, and how, slowly, she's showing him all there is that can be cherished in there. But he acknowledges, also the truth in what his father says – that ultimately, he'll leave her, and with nothing at all, or worse, if he destroys her status among her own people.

"Oh. And do you think you're helping your case telling me that? Listen, son. When I say that I don't care, that doesn't mean that I approve of your disgusting tastes. To – to take a whore, like that, to make love mindlessly to someone you don't pledge yourself to, and worse, to make love to someone of the race of Men! Frail and brittle and short-lived and so disgustingly – long. I shiver to think of the kind of talk it would have led to in Erebor, if any of our forefathers had had wind of one of their sons besmirching the line of Durin in that way."

Were it Balin, or even Nár, or truly anybody but Thraín wounding him with such words, Thorin is sure that his anger would be enough for him to burst out an answer. He'd tell the other how Sutho is frail, yes, frail as glass and yet the metal in her soul is better tempered than the strongest steel; that her long, indeed long limbs curve into full hips in lines that curl and swirl like the most beautiful patterns in banded steel; that her long, yes so long back sways more gracefully and holds more strongly than any blade he could imagine. But Thraín is still gripping Thorin's wounded arm and shakes it while he talks; and all that Thorin is able to do is to look straight ahead, clench his jaw and hope that his father can't see his pain and his hurt.

"But we're not in Erebor, and what you're doing, alas, isn't so rare anymore. At least," Thraín spits, "she's not a Man. And you had the good sense to keep it, well, not so much as private as unofficial, so that it seems that it hasn't harmed your ability to lead."

He takes a deep breath, looks down, and looks like he's consciously making himself open his hand to release Thorin's arm. "But to what you will lead our dwarves, that's what I'm wondering."

Thorin stands still, and waits. He only has to weather the storm, he tells himself. His father will scold him, and question his motives, and underline everything he should have done better. Thorin doesn't wish to give apologies or excuses – he knows his limits and his mistakes and what's done is done. But he wishes, no, he wants to go back. And so he has to wait for an opening for him to speak and defend the outcome of his actions, and hope that the sight of their goal, so close at least, will be enough to hide any doubt about his motives. And in the privacy of his mind he is able to tell himself that his motives have very little to do with money and dreams of settling down, but a lot with a handshake between miners and a dwarf and the strange feeling of being honour-bound to Men – and everything with yellow, earthy warm eyes.

But in front of him the storm is not spent, and Thraín is not done; though obviously he's making a continued effort to rein in his anger. "Thorin," he's saying, "will you remember you're a dwarf when you'll be leading our people? I'm told you lowered yourself so that you wiped Men's vomit and cared for their swine. That you made the others do it too. And that had it been up to you, you wouldn't even have accepted payment. They're not our kin, boy. They don't deserve a thing from us, not our help, nor our sympathy, neither our love nor even our care for their short feeble lives! And don't deceive yourself to think that they'd thank us for that, were we dumb enough to give it to them. – No. Don't speak. I don't care for your excuses. Were you hoping to become some – some sort of short Man, back there, lowering yourself enough that they'd give you some corner to call your own and live the petty little life of a Man in that petty little town of Men? Were you forgetting you are of the mettle of the strongest dwarves? Should I believe that the line of Durin means nothing for my elder son? Was what you got from that place worthy of nearly losing yourself?"

They're both breathing hard, Thorin notices, but he keeps standing motionless, keeps his eyes level, and still says nothing.

Thraín exhales. "You're standing here like a fortress, aren't you, my son? You're watching me sending my forces against you, and you're up behind your walls and hoping you'll hold? Well. You're holding. Won't you lash out? I know you, boy. You're having a hard time not to send yourself bodily in the fray. Or have you changed so much? Is there no fight left in you? Or is it that you have truly nothing to say for yourself?"

There's the slightest hint of a nod coming from Thrain, like the invite from a duellist to a worthy opponent, and to Thorin it feels like the warmest of embrace – it feels like, all in all, father and son aren't so estranged as Thraín's tirade has just made him feel. That's his opening, then.

"My whore, as you said," he says and to his relief his voice is steady enough, if more throaty than usual, "is nothing for you to concern yourself with. You've heard Balin, do you need to hear it from me as well? I didn't leave my duty for her, and I won't. As what I got from that place – didn't you speak with Balin? He showed you the amount of coin we brought back, I'm sure of it, and you know, of course, how close it makes us to our goal. How we lowered ourselves for it – it isn't something I'll gladly talk about. But, father, there aren't many things I'd reminisce happily from the last seventeen years, and some are certainly less palatable than what we did this year."

Thraín clenches his fists as his gaze becomes less focused, and Thorin is well aware that his father, too, had his share of humiliations, and that he, the leader of his people in Thrór's stead since the first day of their exile, has probably more reasons to dislike Men than his son. But this is deflecting some of Thraín's attention, and so the strike feels worth it.

"We might even have brought something that would mean the end of our wanderings, if you accept it."

Thorin has known Balin for as long as he can remember, and noticed how the latter has been surrendering more and more of the leadership to him – and so he's sure that the older dwarf didn't talk of the contract beyond a few hints, and that it's up to himself to defend it. And he's so terribly afraid Balin made a mistake.

"Balin hinted at something," says his father, but he keeps his face blank and this couldn't have been so easy.

"Three years of mining salary for thirty dwarves. Paid in great silver coins, white money. I believe fifteen to twenty of us could do it in six months."

"Do what?" asks Thraín, his voice still devoid of any emotion.

"They're asking us to help them rebuild their mine. To supervise the digging, actually."

"Oh. _That_ mine. And you deem it an interesting deal? How many do you think will escape with their life, this time?"

"Everyone. Father, I made sure of it! The provisions in the contract –"

"Thorin, not even the best dwarvish supervisor in the safest mine of the Dwarves could be sure of such a thing!"

"Yes. Yes, of course, father. I'm sorry –"

"You're young."

"Still, we _will_ work as in a dwarvish mine, father. Not in the sordid conditions of this past year. The contract –"

"Contract? Did you sign anything? And was it a 'we' I heard, as if _you_ will go back to work there?"

"I didn't sign, father. I drafted the contract and presented it to the mine owners. _They_ signed it, even though they were aware that you were the one with the power to accept it. And their condition was that _I_ would come back. They saw us sound the stone, father. They saw me."

"And you won't do any of it unsupervised!" bellows Thraín suddenly. "Not for all the silver in Dunland! You said everyone would escape that mine with their life, and Mahal's hammer, I will make sure that my son doesn't lose his!"

"Then we're walking away. Father. I could do it!"

"Yes. Of course you could. Any of us could. Even Frerin. And lose our mind in the process."

"But you said Dwalin –"

"Dwalin was lucky, _you_ were lucky, and there wasn't one more aware of what happened than the other. No. I'll send Nár with you."

"Nár?"

"He's too old – say it, that's what you were thinking."

"Actually, I was thinking Thrór needs him."

"But we need the money more, and so we need you to go back, and so we need Nár there to teach you and Dwalin."

"So you accept?"

"As I told you. We need the money, and you've known it all along."

Thorin feels his shoulders sag minutely in relief and hopes his father doesn't notice.

"Don't look so glad, Thorin. You're buying yourself six months with your whore, that's all. And what makes _me_ glad is that afterwards, you'll leave and come back to us, and the coin you'll bring back means you'll stay and forget the world of Men. For ever."

For the best of one year, Thorin has been pushing away the moment when he has to say goodbye to Sutho – but now Thraín has set the countdown, and six months feel as short as the fall of a stone. But Thorin, as his father said, is young, and defiant, and proud, and doesn't care of hurting when he looks again firmly into his father's eyes and says: "For ever. Even the strongest dwarf king in the strongest dwarven realm can be sure of such a thing."

-oo00800oo-

They leave only a few days later. Frerin, incensed that he's still not allowed to come, bids them farewell in a voice that is more angry than sad. Nár rides his pony beside Thorin, and as they raise their hands in a last goodbye, the younger dwarf is surprised to see that Thrór himself left his deep hole to watch his old friend leave – and Nár, at that, looks close to tears. Their company is stronger than expected: several seasoned stoneworkers are going with them, and to Thorin's pride and wonder, all of his previous comrades, except Balin and Hlin, insisted to go back with him.

-oo00800oo-

The sun is high in the sky of June, and their ride is merry and short. And when they reach the town on the fourth evening, they head for the inn and Thorin, standing at the doorstep like already so long ago, gazes through the room and finds Sutho immediately. But she's sitting at a table and a young man, black haired with blue eyes, is sitting with her laughing and bending close to her.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter summary: Thorin tries to cope with Sutho's new man, but doesn't really succeed.

Warning : borderline non-con at the end, might be triggering.

-oo00800oo-

"What are you doing? Walk in!" Thorin hears dimly through the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Nár pushes him inside. "Come on, boy. We're parched."

He steps inside as in a dream – a nightmare, this is a nightmare, he thinks – sits with the others at a table in the opposite corner to where Sutho is settled.

She hasn't seen him. It seems she didn't even notice there were dwarves coming in. She's holding her head high and doesn't smile, and Thorin's traitorous heart whispers that the curve of her neck has never looked stronger or more graceful, that her skin has the colour of the warmest sandstone but that no dwarf alive could have sculpted cheekbones so perfect, and that no one could find gems equalling the light in her yellow eyes. She doesn't smile, but she listens intensely to what the man beside her whispers in her ear, and looks wistful, and when he sets his hand – a Man's too long, too frail hand – over hers Thorin counts up to seven heartbeats before she removes it. And does not stand away from him.

The man doesn't look like he could be Sutho's kin. Their features are nothing alike. He's young, for sure, but how young Thorin couldn't say; a lot of Men look young, even childish with their weak noses and transparent skin, until they begin to look old. He's tall, taller than her even sitting, which to a dwarf's eye makes him look gangly and awkward but might make him attractive for a human. His jet-black hair, glossy as the best anthracite, is worn long and loose and curls slightly on his shoulder; he's paler than most Dunland people, paler than Sutho, with a thinner nose and a longer face, and pale blue eyes. He looks like an elf, thinks Thorin disparagingly, but an elf with his own colouring; maybe Sutho has a type, he tells himself, and this expression, one he'd heard only in Men's mouths, suddenly makes sense. Men are fickle, he remembers his mother saying, Men don't love strongly for long; and the surge of blood-hot rage is so strong it makes him grab the edge of the table as he half stands, and he nearly crosses the room here and then. They left their weapons with their gear in their rooms, he thinks, but the inn knives would do, if only he could know who he wants to stab right now, her or him.

He's still half-standing, swaying slightly with the turmoil of his emotions, when someone says close to his ears: "welcome back, master Dwarf – Thorin. The ale's on the house."

That's Maujor, the innkeeper, coming in person to serve them their drinks; Maujor, not Sutho as it always was before, and Thorin's head reels with renewed anger and despair. But the innkeeper wears a small smile and his dark eyes bearing into Thorin's are like an anchor. Thorin releases a long, shuddering breath, and sits.

"Who's that man?" he asks, gesturing to the couple with his chin.

Maujor doesn't smile anymore, but he answers: "Sutho went to visit her mother when you were away. She came back with him. He's her mother's neighbour, I think, and declared himself as a suitor."

If there had been relief in Maujor's eyes, or even pity, Thorin would have stood up and broken something and fought his way to somebody's death, his own, the suitor's, Sutho's, or Maujor's. But the latter's face looks only appraising, as if he were waiting to see if his trust has been well placed. "Will you be spending the evening here?" he only says. "I look forward to hear your music again."

And Thorin hears what he's really saying behind, the hope for an evening of peace, the certainty that dwarves won't ever be welcome if Thorin breaks it – and so he forces himself to smile. There is much more at stake than his feelings for a woman he'll leave in six months anyway, one he's been telling himself he doesn't love for the best of one year. He's here with fourteen of his people, and they trust him – even Thráin trusts him, if reluctantly; and Nár, too, and what would he say if the first thing he saw his young prince do was to kill the Men he's led them back to?

"Music?" He says. "I – I don't know if I'm up to singing, but others sure will. And we came back with better instruments. I have my harp."

"A harp? How unusual."

"Oh," Thorin says, realising a harp is not something that's so often heard in a tavern context. "It's nothing fancy. I made it myself a few years ago and my skills with crafting music instrument are rather minimal. Still, I can fetch it, and I'm sure Dwalin could be persuaded to bring in his fiddle."

Thorin, of course, had hoped to play the harp for Sutho, not for Maujor, and his mood sinks even lower. But an evening of music might well be the antidote to his fury, provided that the customers don't object too much to the battle songs that are sure to come to his mind.

"Come, brother," says Dwalin who is standing close as usual. "We'll get our instruments. The fresh air will do you good."

As they stand and leave, Thorin sees Maujor pass his hand over the spot on the table where he clutched the wood to steady himself a moment earlier; the innkeeper looks pensive as his fingers trace the small dents Thorin's hands left in the hardened pine board.

-oo00800oo-

The relief that Thorin didn't find in Maujor's eyes is evident in Dwalin's – or maybe it's even a kind of fierce pleasure at Thorin's discomfiture, and Thorin knows that his friend wouldn't let him read that expression if he didn't want to. He's able to recognise an offer to take off the edge of his anger in a nice clean fistfight, and when only a few yards from the inn Dwalin's gruff voice says: "turns out she's only one of the race of Men, after all," his fist connects with the other's jaw in the most satisfying manner.

-oo00800oo-

They come back with their instruments and not so inconspicuous marks of their fighting bout. To Nár's upraised eyebrow, Thorin says: "he expressed doubts about my tastes."

"Absolutely," grins Dwalin in answer, and Nár shrugs away that obvious expression of the folly of youth.

Thorin has to admit he feels calmer; he finds he somehow lost the stamina to play the songs of slaughter he had on the tip of his tongue earlier. But he's cold, cold and still, frozen to the deep of his soul, the only warm place in his whole body his throbbing, swelling right cheekbone. So, as Dwalin begins to play his viol, he contents himself with following this lead with his harp, adding harmonies to the flights of the other's bow. Sutho has finally noticed them and went to join the small circle of listeners, standing at the back. Thorin sees her glance at his and Dwalin's bleeding knuckles, then at Dwalin's split lip and then back at Thorin's cheekbone; and finally her intense yellow eyes settle on his own and they look full of unsaid words. But as Dwalin, cruel Dwalin, falls into the most cloyingly sweet love song of his repertoire, the others raising their voice in chorus, Thorin breaks contact, lowers his gaze and tries to lose himself in the harmonies, because now that man, her suitor, stands behind her.

-oo00800oo-

_My love if you would_

_We'd sleep together,_

The dwarves are singing, and the suitor is resting lightly one of his hands on Sutho's waist,

_In a large square bed_

_Adorned with heather,_

And the suitor is bending to whisper something in her ear,

_In the bed centre_

_Flows a fountain wet_

And now the man is smirking,

_The king's best black horse_

_Drinks all he can get_

He's smirking knowingly and Thorin can't make himself look up to see if Sutho answers his grin,

_My love if you would_

_We'd sleep together_

_And we'd be happy_

'_Til the end of the world._

Obviously Dwalin wants to expand on the melody and objectively he's not lost much of his virtuosity in spite of the inconstant practicing; but the last verse has been too much for Thorin, who plays a cadence in the most final way, bringing the song to an end. He sets the harp down with slightly too much strength, making the sound box resonate.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Go on without me. I'm more tired than I thought, I'm going to bed."

As he raises, he sees Sutho make a small jerky movement forward, disengage herself from the man and open her mouth as to say something. But he doesn't understand her game anymore, and leaves.

-oo00800oo-

The next day sees them at the mine. They need again to reach into the stone, but this time Nár is there, first to explain his warding role to Dwalin as he himself sounds the rock, and then Thorin is made to join them, slowly, ever so slowly and carefully. Thorin's heart still pounds with the memory of his dizzying journey to the heart of the mountain, the day of the cave in – and compared to this, what they're doing feels like nothing at all: a routine task of assessing the location of both ore and dangers, a technical affair without the seduction or thrill of what resides further.

But Men are watching them, and it makes the whole affair stranger. They're miners, both workers and owners, and they're used to the stone, but while they were friendly enough in the morning, they appear less so when the three dwarves finally disconnect from the rock and stand up at midday; the Men are huddled together a little further and send them covert, perhaps fearful glances. As Thorin, Dwalin and Nár begin to sketch the lay of the strong stone and the ore under the hill on cheap paper, a strange muttering raises from the Men's corner: 'magic', Thorin thinks he can hear, and maybe words less kind, such a 'witchcraft', and 'unnatural'.

But what began so uncomfortably finally settles in a routine that isn't so unpleasant, Thorin has to admit. They soon realise that building brand new tunnels will be quicker and safer than trying to salvage the whole mine; and after the first days, there's not much need for reaching into stone as there is for sound engineering work. For the first time since the dragon came – the first time in his adult life – Thorin sees Dwarves allowed to work to the true level of their skills; Men defer to them, some grudgingly, some more easily, but all in all that's new and so very welcome.

And as they organise teams, select timber, expose strategies for reaching the ore and draw plans, the working days become at once more fruitful and less long and exhausting than what he's ever experienced at the forge. He finds that it helps his mind settle, and while they build the first arches and walls in their first tunnel, he's able to wall up the despair in his soul.

-oo00800oo-

The evenings at the inn are another kettle of fish entirely. He tells himself he can't not go; that it would seem strange, that the days of June are long and he would only get mad if he were to get back to their rooms and find his bed too early. Sometimes, often even, Dwalin takes pity on him and brings them both to a remote place where they can spar – another thing they have to hide to do. But in truth he can't stay too long away from her, even now. And so he comes back, and sits in a dark corner, nursing his ale – the ale she won't bring herself anymore – and watches her.

He remembers the same time last year, the first days, then months, of their lovemaking, how she would as now work long hours without sitting, how tickling and maddening and hot the waiting was, the anticipation of what they'd maybe find some place to do. Now he only hopes she'll work a little longer, so that her suitor won't have her to himself, so he can watch her and torture himself with ret hot jealously.

And so he watches, and doesn't understand. She never smiles when the man is there, always bears herself in that strange proud way he noticed the evening of their arrival, her back straight and her eyes faraway. They only seem to animate when she can catch Thorin's gaze, and sometimes she smiles at him, that knowing smile the meaning of which he knew so well before, and he understands even less.

Because she never ever forbids the man one thing either; she looks at Thorin, in a way that could seem pleading, and meanwhile the suitor is pressing his thigh to hers, or whispering in her ear, or making a show to help her carry some order. And how can this courageous, open-hearted, clever woman even allow such a man to set his eyes on her, he can't imagine. Of course the man would be pretty to a daughter of Men, of course he's young and healthy and supple and strong, though his body is not the one of a warrior – and to the thought Thorin's hand convulses where the pommel of a sword would be, if he was enough of a fool to wear his sword here; but he's also one of these men who will never notice a dwarf, or if they do, will make a show of looking them _down_. He's made himself friends fast, for sure, but they aren't the friends Thorin thought Sutho would enjoy, among them the blacksmith. He's condescending to the innkeeper, impolite to the other maids, and even, to Thorin's eyes, seems to have attentions for Sutho only as far as they allow him to touch her.

-oo00800oo-

And as the days and weeks go by, he watches, and lets himself burn with hate, and strains himself to understand what she wants of him, because he knows her well enough to be sure that this woman, one who let another one love her, is indeed trying to ask him something.

-oo00800oo-

One afternoon as they need to assess the extent of a large mass of copper ore, Nár's shoulders suddenly sag and Thorin hears a small grunt of pain. There's a flicker of something and suddenly his being expands from a small dwarf in a small hill to a powerful being connected to rivers of stone; and again, he knows he could follow the serpentine and the basalt and the marble to the highest peak and the deepest mountain root. But Thorin knows better now, and Dwalin is there beside him to force him back into his own self, and then Nár grunts again, resettles himself against the stone and all of this vanishes.

"Nár?" asks Thorin. "Are you all right?"

"Beware, boy," says Nár in a somewhat strangled voice. "You're not the mountain, try to remember it. And I'm all right. Just getting old and tiring too easily."

"Your day of work's done, then," says Dwalin who looks at the both of them with suspicious eyes.

"Aye," says Thorin. "Nár, I'll walk you to our lodgings"

-oo00800oo-

They walk back in silence and Thorin realise how exhausted Nár really is: the old dwarf wobbles as he walks and breathes fast and after a while says in a still choked voice: "That stone-sensing is wearing me down as weeks of keeping the shape of my forging true never would. And you're a hard one to ward, Thorin, you're called to ore and gems like very few others – your father, maybe, he's like that. And Thrór, of course." A flicker of something, bitterness, or maybe pain, passes through his features, and he clears his throat to hide it and adds quickly: "Besides, I'm a metal crafter much more than a stoneworker, though I could do both when I had the strength."

"So am I, even though you say ore calls to me," says Thorin. "But do you think you should go back to Thráin's settlement?"

"Maybe I will, after a while. But not now. Not while you're still so – so woefully porous to all that the stones whisper to you. And then there's this woman."

"Woman?"

"The girl with the sticky young man who keeps eyeballing you with her big yellow eyes. I'm still not sure you want to slay her or bed her, and as long as I haven't made my opinion I want to keep my eyes on you."

"What option do you think would be better?"

"Huh? Ah. Options. Bedding her, of course. Much less consequences on our well-being. And our purses. And maybe it would take the edge off stone sensing, for you. Tell me, she's the woman who so incensed your lord father?"

"But I did bed her! And now she, she betrayed me! I leave for only two weeks and when I come back she's already replaced me with that elf-like excuse for a man!"

"You think she replaced you? She doesn't look at you like she'd easily let go of you."

"I know! I know and I don't understand! She has a suitor, she allows him things in public that I never could dream of, and then she looks at me like she'd like to undress for me here and then!"

"Breathe, Thorin. Calm down, and stop crushing my forearm like that. She's of the race of Men, maybe things are different for them?"

"But how, Nár? How? She allows a man to talk to her of marriage, and she looks at another? How could I ever trust her now?"

"I don't know – for sure, your mother would never have allowed your father to go even as far as sitting with her if she had set her eyes on someone else. But as I said, we might not understand the rules of the world of Men as well as we think. Maybe you should try to talk to her?"

"Hrm. If I can pry her from that man without getting myself tried for murder, maybe."

"Yeah. Or, you know, you could stop thinking of her and work hard, craft beautiful things, lead your people to wealth and glory, and be a good dwarf. That would please your father and he'd be less likely to murder _me_ for encouraging you."

"Nár?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you for encouraging me."

-oo00800oo-

Even with Nár's encouragements, Thorin can't find the courage to do much for weeks. It's the man at her side, he tells himself. And truly he doesn't see how he could approach her without having words with him first, and he's sure words would quickly degenerate into fists, and then Thorin doesn't trust himself not to kill the man with his bare hands were he given the chance.

Instead, he takes the easy option, the one that would win his father back. He makes himself be a good dwarf. He leads the stoneworkers harder, praises them higher, and works beside them longer, and the mine begins to shape up as fair as dwarvish halls, all well-traced tunnels that cut only the right stone, smooth walls shored up with well-balanced arches of rock, pumps and lifts and wooden rails to make the work easier.

When the master blacksmith comes to their rooms one day, talking of "being swamped with work", of "low-set anvils made for dwarves and going to waste", offering work and saying he's "never heard of dwarves refusing coin," setting a few coppers on the table, Thorin doesn't throw the small change back at him and instead agrees to come in the evenings as long as it's summer and the light lasts.

And for a little time this is enough. He works from dawn to dusk and goes to his bed exhausted, and in between his mind is full of the song of stone and the call of gems and his blood thrums with the music of iron and under his hands all of this made into a great fugue of many crafted things and truly he could lose himself into it. He begins to snap at whoever tries to make him slow down or tries to take his mind away from his craft and finds himself drawn only to discussions about stone or metal; Dwalin first mocks him, then begins to groan about the iron mind of the line of Durin, and then doesn't even complain anymore; and Nár only looks at him like he used to look at Thrór.

But soon he can't ignore the flaws in the music of his craft. The mountain he's carving is only a small hill and he's only reaching for a little copper, and if the strongest ore is calling him further, he's warded from it and the calling is balanced with a wrongness that makes him forbid himself from bursting out of his restraints. Working at the mine feels to him as if he were listening to a symphony through great depths of water, and he finds himself straining to hear the muted sounds and shaking his head in frustration. The forging in the evening doesn't bring any solace either; the iron he has to use is still as corroded and debased as ever, not even fit for the kitchenware and doorknobs he's asked to make; and as for the nobler work of tool- and blade-making, the discrepancy between the true shape of what needs to be done and what comes out of the master smith's hands is so great that the soul-rending dissonance of it makes him grit his teeth.

And in this exhausting cacophony of false routine, the call of alien yellow eyes that have nothing to do with gems but remind him he's a part of a world of living, growing, earthy beings begins again to feel the only note that rings true.

-oo00800oo-

"Have you seen?" he hears one evening at the forge, and sees that his master has settled with a friend and a bottle of something between them. "There's an inn maid who found herself a sweetheart. I wonder what she's giving the guy for him to act so interested."

"Oh, Huor, you mean?" says the blacksmith. "For all of his obvious ranger blood, he's a good one. And he's in earnest, he told me. The maid will inherit a cottage and a few acres of good land and he owns an adjoining farmstead. A union would be in both their interest."

"Yeah. And the girl is rather easy on the eyes, too."

"Pshaw. A bit squat in the thigh and wide-arsed for my tastes. And much too sharp-tongued, isn't she?"

"Oh?"

"Yeah. And she's not nearly modest enough. Why, she even shows herself with _dwarves_."

The blacksmith drains his glass in one noisy gulp and the other serves him another immediately.

"Still," the former goes on, "I'm sure Huor will know how to put a stop to it. He won't be one to suffer his wife shaming them both in that way."

"Heh. He'll probably keep her inside, anyway."

"Sure. And he'll show her what a true man is," leers the blacksmith.

-oo00800oo-

Thorin has to force himself to let go of the hammer he's seized reflexively and is surprised to be able to talk politely to the man as he says: "the cauldron is riveted and ready to go. I'm leaving, the light won't last long enough to begin something else. I may not have the time to come tomorrow."

As he goes they're still talking behind his back but they're not worth listening to, and he realises that their conversation might well have shaken him out of his month-long reverie of stone. A sizeable part of his mind is incensed that she would forsake him for some scrap of farmland; but he also knows that he hasn't got even that to offer her. And a largest part is screaming in horror at the idea of his Sutho, his witty and strong-willed woman who comes and go as she wishes, freer than any dwarf woman he's ever met, being wed and kept behind closed doors like a prisoner.

And suddenly it's not even that he wants to bed her, or that he wants her to be his; he just has to see her, while he can, while she's still free, and whole, and unbroken.

-oo00800oo-

He waits until the night has settled, walks to the back of the inn and climbs up the outside stairs. Sutho's room is dark and empty and the window is closed, so he perches on the rail and waits, hoping that she'll come soon and come alone.

"Let me escort you back to your room", he hears after a while, and sure as rain Sutho and Huor are just a bit further down in the direction of the river. Huor is holding her arm as if to steady her, and he feels a surge of violent hate; but as far as he can see in the dark the both of them are well-clothed and unrumpled, and she keeps herself straight, her arm rigid and her body well away from him, and mingling with the hate there's now hope.

"Thank you, Huor," she says in a clear voice, "maybe another time? I had in mind to pass through the kitchen before climbing up, I'll warm myself some water. Let us kiss goodnight?"

Thorin's blood boils instantly to the mention of a kiss; and it's obvious, from Huor's sudden leaning towards her, that his blood is boiling too from an altogether different sentiment. But Sutho is quick to peck the man on the cheek, and all that remains for him to do is catch her hand and bring it to his lips. But kiss the hand he does, a long sloppy kiss that Thorin would swear involves tongue. She doesn't take her hand off and he feels an incredible loss.

-oo00800oo-

Then he's alone in the dark again; entirely too much time passes until finally a lonely candle begins to flicker in Sutho's room. He peers inside and she's there, pulling in a basin of smoking hot water; and then she begins to undress, the soft yellow candlelight painting creamy crescents on her skin.

He wanted to knock and enter; his intention was to talk and try to settle things down, one way or another, but now he feels suddenly shy. She's letting her guard down, this moment of softness he's witnessing belonging to her alone, and he's not even sure he's still welcome to behold her in her nakedness. But that's what he does, watching, and only that, losing the courage to make himself known but beyond caring that she might see him through the window.

She's standing in the basin; she's bending her head aside to undo her bun; the dark hair is now cascading to her mid-back and he realises he's rarely seen her like this, all naked and her hair undone – perhaps only the couple of times they could climb up to their cave in the mountain. And then she upturns a vessel of water upon her head and he's _never_ seen her like that, wet and sleek and glistening like polished ivory

Next she's soaping herself, the suds running down and tracing the curve of her breasts and the lines of her legs. He thinks of what the blacksmith said of her form; but Thorin knows he loves those lines, the roundness and the muscle tapering into surprisingly thin knees and ankles, the swirl of dimples in her lower back and the larger curves of her cheeks. And his breathing comes out so strong now that he thinks she surely can hear it; but maybe he doesn't care as he feels himself harden and takes his length in his hand.

She's naked, and he's not, and it feels so unfair; he makes his free hand roam under his undershirt and up his torso, imagining she's doing it – and in a fleeting thought, thinks how strange he must look, precariously perched on the railing and bending to look at the window, and how ridiculous an end it would be if he were to tumble and crash down with his fly open and his belt undone and his hands still inside. But there's a thrill, also, in going on and he begins to pump himself slowly; and when his eyes focus again she's rubbing her torso and breasts. She's pushing them up and he's falling in love again with their heavy roundness and their dark nipples; and it's those nipples she's touching now, in a delicate gesture that hasn't got anything with washing, and everything with pleasure; her head goes back and her mouth opens slightly, and he thinks he can see a sliver of gold under her heavy lids.

One of her hands slides down a stomach that's still glistening with soap and loses itself in the curls between her thighs, and she must have moaned loudly because he heard her. He wants to kiss those moaning lips; he needs to drink the taste of her, feels suddenly so thirsty; and his cock is swelling stone hard in his hand, leaking fluid, and as his hips are jerking up in an uncontrolled effort to increase his rhythm he has to extend his other hand to the wall to steady himself. Her hands are moving faster too, and she's mouthing words; he's sure there's an 'o' somewhere and wishes fervently she's calling his name – but he couldn't swear she's not saying Huor, and that's when he comes, in a violent explosion that's not free of rage.

She's reaching her peak, too, and then her legs buckle and she kneels in the water. He sways and has the presence of mind to let himself fall on the right side, on the stairs. There's no way he could knock and call to her now; he feels a cool breath of air on his softening cock and straightens his clothing as he can. Then he climbs down the stairs feeling tired and shameful, and goes to bed.

-oo00800oo-

The next morning, Nár remarks on his mood, saying that it feels he's back in the realm of the living. "Has something happened?" the old dwarf asks.

"Nothing," Thorin decides to answer. "But I'm finding being a good dwarf isn't working."

"Thank Mahal. You're not a very pleasant dwarf when you decide to be a good one."

-oo00800oo-

But taking the lid off his feelings doesn't help his mood in the next week – on the opposite. Huor is still there, Thorin feels angrier than ever, and with even less right to act upon it. He still opts out of going to the inn, choosing the forge instead, where he has to endure the talk of the blacksmith and his friends. The only difference is that now even his exhaustion isn't enough to make him sleep and he often finds himself roaming under Sutho's window without daring to do anything.

She's the one to find him there one very late evening. She catches him by his arm, hard, and for the life of him he can't decipher her expression, something between relief, helplessness and profound anger.

"Come," she says. "The only worse thing would be Huor to find us both here."

She drags him and he follows along the river and through streets he doesn't remembers until he's lost in a maze of small alleys and dead ends. The houses are dingy, some of them obviously abandoned and she pushes him in one of these among the scent of wet plaster and saltpetre and mould.

"This isn't working," she says through gritted teeth.

"What isn't working?"

"What? You! Him! Everything! I had hoped you'd see me and understand – that you'd feel compelled to – Never mind what I hoped."

"What? Sutho – compelled to do what?"

"They say that dwarves are possessive. That they are jealous. I thought you'd be jealous! That you'd act upon it! But you're not. You might be jealous, though how can I be sure to read a dwarf properly, but you don't act. You took one look at him and you look – beaten. He's winning!"

She's angry. She's terribly, deeply angry, and maybe that's why she doesn't make sense, maybe she doesn't mean what she says, because else –

"Woman," he croaks, and feels his body trembling with the strain of bottling in his fury. "That's what you're doing, setting one against the other, like prised stallions, to see who will take the upper hand? Are you haggling, waiting to see who will come up with the better offer?"

"And if I was?" she asks, and behind the anger he can see despair. "What will it ever bring me, that I love you, except regrets and a broken heart if I'm lucky, and an ill reputation if I'm not? I'm an inn maid, Thorin! Huor is my better offer, my only hope to marry well and settle down. Don't you think I should consider it?"

"But you talk of love" he says, and his voice breaks. "How can you say that word and let another walk with you, touch you, kiss you, _court_ you?"

"Who says _I_'m letting him?" she asks in a tone he can't place.

"But you're a woman!"

"Exactly. I'm a woman, without a father but with a mother who knows where my interests are."

"I don't understand, Sutho. You're a woman, a grown woman, you're the one letting two idiots take turns at wooing you. You talk to him of love, too? Is love such a little things for the race of Men that it can be spread so thin?"

-oo00800oo-

Suddenly she's very close to him, her eyes fierce and bearing straight into his though he knows that in such darkness she can't really see his face. "I don't love him," she says, her whole body tensing, then sagging even closer to him as she adds: "I – I'm not even sure I like him. It frightens me, what he'll do with me once we're married."

"Once you're married," he growls, and seizes her wrists, his fury finally overcoming him. Some small part of him notices her look of alarm, her aborted tentative to recoil, but he's beyond caring. "Once you're married? Sutho, you're _mine_."

With that he pulls her down by her arm and takes possession of her mouth, kissing her hard, all teeth and hard tongue and nothing considerate or sweet. "You're mine," he says again as he breaks the kiss for air.

"Yes," she says, breathing hard, from desire or fear or both he can't guess. "I'm yours."

This is the only encouragement he needs; and he pushes her down to the wall, turns her around so she faces it, fumbles into her clothes, pulling her tuning over her head and half untying, half tearing her skirt down. The movement brings her to her knees and she braces herself on the wall, the long muscles of her back rippling.

He's got no time for endearments or play; he wants to take her, to claim her, to mark her as his. So he enters her deeply in one move, without warning, and her grunt is not one of pleasure; at the same time he brings his face to her back and relishes the sensation of his beard abrading her skin, of his tongue tasting her sweat, of his teeth marking her.

Then he's fucking her, fast and hard and powerful, and he sees how she has to resist to his assaults, pushing back into him, her neck tense and her arm muscles knotted.

"Thorin," she moans, or cries, "not so fast, you're hurting me!"

But he's never been one to talk much during the act, and right now he can't really hear, and can't answer; the word "mine, mine, mine" fills his mind, and his heart, and his groin. The only thing he can do is grasp her hips stronger in his large hands and angle his thrusts maybe truer; but instead of slowing down he's moving more frantically and hears himself cry out, great howls going out with each stroke inside her. A stray ray of moonlight falls on her back which glistens with sweat as it glistened under the candlelight a few nights ago but now she's his, his, only his, and his hips jerk more and more erratically and he feels such a tightness and–

"At least," she says in a strangled voice, "don't come in me."

And he remembers, and pulls out at the last possible moment.

-oo00800oo-

She lets herself slide on all fours, then sits in the dirt, her back still to him, her breath coming fast and shallow. She's going to be cold, he knows as he sees the sweat dry fast on her skin. He retrieves her tunic and drapes is across her shoulders.

"What did you just do," she says, but it's not really a question and she still doesn't face him.

"I –"

"No. Don't say." And finally she turns and her face is crumpled in an expression he's never seen. "You didn't heed me, didn't wait for me, didn't care for me – only took me."

He's honestly perplexed. "But – didn't you want it?"

Her eyes, too, are glistening when she answers: "I wanted you, yes. But not like that. Never like that. Thorin, I didn't enjoy it. At all. I'm not your thing, and if I'm yours, you're mine, too."

She stands, sways once, and busies herself with putting on her clothes as well as she can, her back once again to him.

"Never do it again, or I'll promise, it will be the last time that you touch me," she says in a blank voice and then walks to the door.

"Sutho!" he calls. "Wait! I'm sorry. Please!"

"Yes," she says. "You'd better be."

But she doesn't stop or wait and it takes him the best of one hour to find his way back to his lodgings.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter summary and notes : Where there's more in Dwalin than meets the eye (but didn't we know it already?). And there's sparring, and fighting in earnest, and amends, and an offer, and lovemaking. And maybe more.

Warning: the last scene might be verging towards the upper limit of the mature rating.

-ooo0008000ooo-

"Dwalin," Thorin says the next day after another not-so-engaging session at the mine. "Care for some sparing?"

"Oh. Finally realised how rusty you're about to get," answers Dwalin with a big, somewhat predatory, grin. "Not afraid I'm going to crush you down? And what about that forge of yours? Got fed up with its delicious owner at last?"

"Let's say I'm tired of Men as a whole, right now," and Thorin hopes his scowl is enough to deter Dwalin from more investigation on his motives – but of course Dwalin knows him much too well and will do as he chooses.

"Of, that's what it is? Ah. Won't ask, if you don't want to. Well, give me a moment to get my weapons. Do you want me to get yours, too?"

"If you can manage to bring all of it discretely – you're going to look like a porcupine, you know?"

"Pah. Don't I always? Meet at the upturned stone? I know it's far from the town, but –"

"Yeah, best they don't look at these strange magical dwarves any more suspiciously."

-oo00800oo-

Dwalin doesn't look like a porcupine when he joins Thorin, but the enormous elongated bundle he's carrying does feel suspicious enough.

"Durin's hammer, Dwalin, what did you take? Everything?"

"Sure. It's been ages since you haven't _asked_ for some weapons training, so I thought we'd make it special. No more coddling, my prince!"

"As if you were coddling me these last weeks!"

"Oh, but I was, your highness." Dwalin's tone becomes more serious. "You didn't notice? Really? Mahal's balls, you're really gone in the head."

Thorin says nothing and goes to pick up his battle axe and sword among the respectable arsenal that Dwalin packed. He's still not sure whether Dwalin is serious or not, but isn't about to ask him, not if it must involve another talk about the state of his head right now – and Mahal preserve him from Dwalin trying to pry into the state of his heart, too. He stands, balancing his weapons, and says "What are you waiting for? I won't coddle you either, my lord."

-oo00800oo-

Of course Dwalin is upon him within the second, twin axes firmly in hand. They know each other too well for any circling or testing or prodding and the first attack is in earnest, one of Dwalin's axes going for a hook under the guard of Thorin's sword while the other swishes in a wide arc where Thorin's face was a heartbeat ago. But it's Dwalin's usual first move and one Thorin hasn't fallen for since he was still a prince in Erebor; he parries easily, avoids the hook and moves forward and down with his sword to take advantage of Dwalin's upper-going right arm. Of course he meets only air; this is their best-rehearsed dance, one that begins with conventional, well-practised steps and counter steps, fluid sequences of mirrored forms, and only then diverts into ever-new variations. It's what makes them deadly in skirmishes, what saved both their lives already once or twice, what will make them strong in battle should there ever be one, this perfect knowledge of the other's fighting style, even of the other's every move and body stances, and this ability to improvise and expand from here.

He finds he can still lose himself in that dance of parry and attack and swirl and bend and feint; his slightly lesser bulk makes him still just a little swifter on attacks and he knows the forge kept his arms strong even with the lack of systematic training. He knows his sword is deadly in his hand, his axe is pliant and fast, and he himself is the centre of it all, his balance still as good as ever, making him spin and thrust and swish easily; he even knows he can keep enough wind and poise to allow himself to break momentarily his attention towards the other's moves and look up to Dwalin's face.

The other isn't pulling his strokes, of this Thorin is sure, swirling both his axes with a strength Thorin know he'll never reach, an accuracy that might even have improved again, and this grace that Thorin always feels blessed to witness; and Dwalin is grinning, a wide, unguarded, _happy_ grin, lost in the headiness of the fight with his shield brother. Thorin gives him an open smile in answer, wild and challenging and for a quarter of a second Dwalin's expression shifts, his eyes opening larger with something that could be surprise, or hope, or pain, and his rhythm falters, only minutely. But this is enough for Thorin, whose hook with his own axe catches on the shaft of the other's right hand axe; then there's twirling until their bodies press against each other, Thorin adding all his weight to try to disarm his opponent. Dwalin's arm is at the right – awkward – angle, Thorin can feel its light tremor, and for the time of a breath he thinks he's done it. But the other holds, and turns, and breaks away, and the dance goes on.

Strike, and swish, and parry, and retreat, and strike again, trying to pass through the twin circles of Dwalin's swirling blades; Thorin's sword arm keeps moving as fast and as accurately, and manages a few scratches on the other's heavy leather tunic. But he soon realises that all his attacks come now from his sword, and that his axe swirls, yes, but only in defence, still deflecting Dwalin's strokes, but no more than this.

"Come on, highness", taunts Dwalin, "is that an axe in your hand, or merely a very thin shield?"

And Thorin gathers his strength for a left-handed slice that he knows will never be strong or fast enough for damage, and then has to raise his sword in the last possible moment to block Dwalin's much more convincing thrust. His riposte is again with his sword, fast and sure but hardly unforeseen and easily parried, and he has to step back. It hurts his pride, and for a moment he rallies, his sword striking repeatedly until Dwalin, in turns, retreats.

But this can't last, and Thorin knows that even his more economic build can't buy him that much time until this burst of pride and anger unwinds him enough that he'll yield. Dwalin knows it too, of course, and the half-smile that hovers now on his feature is infuriating; so Thorin doesn't yield, only allowing himself to be overcome by the rage of the fight, finding a little more strength in the rush of adrenaline, and hitting as much as he can.

"Stop it," says Dwalin, only a little winded. "You don't know what you're hitting when you become that way, and if you don't hurt me you'll hurt yourself. Stop it, Thorin."

"Do you yield?" says Thorin panting, sweat running in his eyes.

"If you wish. Safety before pride."

"Thank you for sparing my honour, brother," Thorin grins, going down from his adrenaline high. "And you were right, my left arm is awfully rusty."

"Yeah. Between that accident at the mine and you using only your dominant hand at the forge, it had to be expected. Maybe you should switch your hammer arm, to try to build back some strength? It's not as if that blacksmith would notice the dip in quality. That is, if you still wish to work there."

Thorin goes for their waterskins and drinks several mouthfuls.

"Or I could just go back to training regularly with you. I told you, I'm a bit tired of Men these days."

"Sure. I'm looking forward to beat your sorry arse as you desperately try to do something with only your left-hand axe. But meanwhile, if we find ourselves in a real fight, you should switch to shield and sword, I think."

"I'll think of it. Care for a smoke?"

"Sure."

-oo00800oo-

It becomes their new routine: a day at the mine, and then while the light of the late summer lasts, a trek away from the town, every day a little further, a little closer to the mountain, meeting in thick enough woods or well hidden gullies to spar. Dwalin is true to his word, challenging Thorin to fight with only one axe, and it's painfully obvious how much gruesome training the latter will have to suffer before he becomes again decent with his weapon. Sometimes, though, Thorin will use a sword and a shield and then their bouts are less unbalanced, often ending in checkmate, neither managing to pass through the other's guard.

A late afternoon, as he's not even reached the skirt of the town, Dwalin somewhere in front with their weapons, he hears a whistle followed by coarse laughter. He turns and sees Huor wobbling towards him, obviously inebriated.

"Hey, you dwarf, what are you doing, following your friend outside like that?" The man is slurring his words and he looks Thorin up and down with an expression that the dwarf can't quite place.

"Not your business," says Thorin.

"Oh? And why not? Don't you think I'd be an improvement on him? I'm sure you could wish for a little more, heh, _refinement_. A big brute of a boyfriend like him, versus sweet, considerate me?"

"What?" bellows Thorin.

"Oh, come on, _my lady_. I've seen through your little game with that fellow, haven't I? Always leaving the place discretely, one behind the other, always returning discretely at night, one in front of the other. I bet he loves tumbling you roughly in the grass, now doesn't he?"

"What?"

"Stop playing coy, lady. I heard the miners when they told there were women in your group. And of course it is said that dwarf women are indisguish- intindisgui- ah, like their men, with thick beards and gruff voices, but I could easily guess with you."

"Oh," says Thorin, and now that his astonishment is less he doesn't know if he feels utter outrage or some kind of dark amusement. "Could you?"

"Of course! Your features are finer than most others' with that pretty nose and sweet eyelashes of yours, and your beard is shorter, and you play the harp, and of course you clothe and adorn yourself with too much care for a male – I should know, even Sutho remarked on some details of your clothing the other day."

"Sutho, heh?"

Thorin feels his blood boil but Huor is too far in his cups to notice and instead closes the gap between them, hovering his hand close to Thorin's bearded cheek.

"Yes. My intended. But she doesn't need to know any of this, does she? Come, lady. I've seen the looks you send me at the inn. And I can't say that I'm not, well, tickled, heh? By the idea of such an exotic woman in my bed." He winks, and then tries to hook his hand around Thorin's neck. "I could even pay you, what do you think?" And with that he crashes his mouth on Thorin's.

"_Maimli mi rakhâs!_" Thorin jerks Huor's arm away with all his strength, sending the man head first in the dirt.

"Oooh, playing rough, are we? I love a woman who can resist me. Especially since I know you need the money," adds the man with a conspiratorial grin, "the blacksmith told me."

Thorin pulls him up by the lapels of his coat, and finally know what he feels towards him: gratefulness that he's just provided a reason for a beating, without needing to involve Sutho. "Now listen, _mazaznûn_," he says through clenched jaws, and his anger isn't a feint, not one ounce of it. "No dwarf woman would stoop as low as to even touch you, you poor excuse for a _khûthzul_ man. A woman of the dwarves is to be honoured and respected and will never, ever lie with anyone for money, not even for all the gold of the mountains!"

And as Huor is still absurdly trying to leer at Thorin, taking advantage of their closeness to _rub_ himself on the other's stomach, the dwarf just kicks him in the shin, relishing in the sound his heavy boot makes on the man's unprotected leg, and when the latter kneels in pain, why, it only offers Thorin an opening for a direct hit in the face with a massive fist. It seems such a treatment finally makes the man realise that things aren't going in the intended direction as his expression shifts into a hateful grimace and he lands a strong hook into Thorin's stomach pit.

Huor might be drunk, but not enough to be worthless in a fight; actually, Thorin thinks as the superior reach of the man allows him to land a blow on the dwarf's jaw, he might be one of those who become beserk with alcohol, forgetting all caution and just trying to hit as much as they can. And even in his state, the man is swift on his legs, and his moves have nothing to do with battle-training and all with street brawling. Still, Thorin has learnt a thing or two about fighting against the rules, and even with his recent slacking, his training and his physical strength are still leagues above the other. He manages a hook to the other's side and the cracking sound his fist makes tells about broken ribs, and that's when the man goes for his throat, probably realising that a fistfight won't lead him anywhere.

Soon they're rolling in the mud, trying to choke and break and bind, hitting on short range without the possibility to aim, only trying to hurt. It's an unfair fight, Thorin knows with satisfaction: his own muscles are stronger, his bones sturdier, and his head is cooler – and Huor will suffer before Thorin decides this is enough.

-oo00800oo-

There's a metallic clang somewhere and Thorin finds himself being pulled away by his cloak.

"What do you think you are doing, Thorin?" growls Dwalin, the bundle of weapons he just discarded lying a few feet away, thankfully still wrapped.

"Huor! Stop!" says a female voice at the same time – Sutho's.

Thorin frees himself from Dwalin's grasp, breathing hard – he'll admit as much, since the other is panting, absolutely out of breath.

"What happened?" asks Sutho.

"That – that little whore couldn't even understand when a man wants to have a bit of harmless fun," says Huor. "She – she hit me. I was about to show her –"

"She?" asks Dwalin

"Yes, who is 'she'?" asks Sutho

"Oh, come on," says Huor, gesturing to Thorin. "Can't you see she's female? I thought you had at least noticed her clothes."

"I see," says Dwalin, and Mahal help him, Thorin thinks he can see the other dwarf's mouth twitch slightly. "We don't like it," he growls to the man, "when outsiders are trying to guess about our comrades' gender."

"Dwalin," groans Thorin, "no need to defend my honour."

"No, _she_ obviously doesn't need it," says Sutho, and Thorin sees her exchange a look with Dwalin, knows her enough to discern the well-hidden note of mirth in her tone. But it disappears entirely when she adds: "and she was defending herself, wasn't she?"

"It's a misunderstanding," mumbles the man. "Of course there was nothing for her to defend herself against."

"Yeah," says Dwalin, "cultural differences, I guess. Has to be expected sometimes. Well, come, Thorin, I guess it's better if we get on our way. Nothing here to remember much about, is there?"

"I'm sure of it," says Sutho with a too-sweet smile. "Huor, time to go to sleep over all that liquor."

-oo00800oo-

"Durin's great hammer and two anvils," swears Thorin when they are far enough. "She was making fun of me. You were, too."

"Me?" asks Dwalin with a wiggling of his large eyebrows. "Making fun of a damsel in distress? Oh, my _lady_."

"Shut up."

"No way. Did he believe you and I are involved in some romance?"

"How did you guess," says Thorin dryly. "I wonder why he didn't think _you_ were the female."

"Hey. If you're the male in this relationship, what about it being your turn to carry the weapons?"

Thorin manages to catch the great bundle before it falls on the ground and groans. "What did you add in there? It's even heavier than last time."

"Or you're just tired. At least, this madman's assumptions allowed you to release some steam."

"Aye. You know, I feel calmer than I've been for a while. Happier, even."

-oo00800oo-

Later, somewhere far enough at the root of the mountains, their fighting bout is more balanced than it has been in a long time. Thorin realises that he's found back the ability to centre himself in combat, though he didn't know he'd lost it before.

-oo00800oo-

Even later, they sit and smoke together, waiting for the night to settle and hide them during their walk back to town.

"So," says Dwalin, "you and Sutho…"

"Me and Sutho, nothing."

"Still – or should I ask about you and Sutho, _and_ her suitor?"

"Ack. And what can I say? She doesn't want to marry him, it appears, but she still waits for it, meanwhile waiting for me to do something about it, I don't know what, since she says I can't give her a thing. And she'll let me fuck her, and says she's mine, but will leave me if I try to own her. And she says she loves me, but will give herself to another. And meanwhile he tries to woo me, thinking I'm your sweetheart, and hopes to keep it hidden from her. And I guess she saw right through his act. Would you understand one thing in that mess?"

There's a strange sound coming from Dwalin, like a muffled guffaw, then a snort. "Well, cultural differences, as I said earlier. Thorin, you look so conflicted it's kind of ridiculous, you know?" He pauses, trying for some smoke rings, then goes on: "if I had known, back in Erebor, that Thorin son of Thraín son of Thrór, heir to the throne, one promising dwarf if I ever knew one, would fall in love with a woman of the race of Men."

Thorin blows a smoke ring of his own up in the air, managing to send it cruising against the breeze, thinking of how this little bit of dwarven magic would be perceived by the townsmen.

"Mahal. Love," he says after a while. "What if I truly love her? What of the rest of my life? Tell me, how do you manage it?"

"Manage what?"

"I mean," and he smirks just a little, "talking of dwarves stumbling away from their promising path, I know you like to fuck dwarves. _Male_ dwarves. That you don't love. How do you do it?"

"Well, male _Men_ aren't so bad either, and don't tell my father," smirks back Dwalin, but Thorin can read the uncertainty in his gaze. "Longer, slender cocks. Sweeter. Well. I. I guess it's a bit like you and fighting – I mean, not like that, I mean it helps release the pressure. What I – the one I lo– you know, what I want is so – so unattainable – Oh Mahal's balls, Thorin, it's unfair. Stop asking."

But Thorin isn't really interested in the details of Dwalin's love life. "I doesn't feel like releasing any pressure when I'm with Sutho," he says. "Rather the opposite. You know, Mother says that the thing about Dwarves loving only once isn't entirely true. That she's seen people love twice."

He feels Dwalin's aborted start beside him, looks with some surprise at the other who says: "Thorin, are you – do you know what you're doing to – no. You're just wondering about your future, aren't you?" He sighs, puts his arm over Thorin's shoulders. "I know it feels bleak, sometimes. Well, the both of us, we'll just have to hope that your mother is right."

Thorin really doesn't know how he feels at the idea, a tiny spark of hope fighting the deepest feeling of loss. It must show on his face, because next Dwalins says: "Sutho loves you, though. And brother, if you do love her, well, do so, while you can, and don't think twice."

-oo00800oo-

The night has fallen well and good when they begin their walk back to town, Dwalin in front with one axe still in hand and Thorin behind with the rest of the weapons. In the moonless dark the heather looks grey and the pale limestone of a nearby cliff nearly white in his night vision, the black holes of the entrances of some underground galleries a stark contrast. Last year, thinks Thorin, he was climbing down a similar path – but with Sutho at his arm. Now there are the sure steps of his shield brother scouting ahead, and himself watching his back; there's been fighting instead of lovemaking, and before that, jealously, and confusion, and heartache, and that's when Thorin knows that whatever the cost, he'll make up to Sutho before he leaves. That for a short while, he'll find back what they had last autumn, and will give it back to her.

Maybe that's because he's so lost in these thoughts that he doesn't see, hear, what she should have noticed much earlier: luminous dots between Dwalin and himself, on their right side; dots like eyes, moving, but not like animals move, and their light is reddish; and the noises, metallic not-quite muffled enough noises; and then he sees the dark shapes, running bent and much too close to them.

"Dwalin!" he bellows. "Orcs!"

He lets the bundle of weapons fall on the ground, keeping his grasp on his sword, has still time enough to bend and take Dwalin's second axe in his other hand. "Here," he calls, throwing it to his friend.

"Hello, Longbeards," says one orc with a fang-baring grimace, and he raises up his blade.

Then the orcs are upon them, and all Thorin can do is roll down, seize his shield in the same movement, then slice at the legs of his first opponent and raise up the shield to parry the riposte.

"All right?" calls Dwalin, hacking his way towards Thorin.

"Sure," Thorin grins, springing back up.

Soon they're back to back, and then it's disappointingly easy: two orcs are already on the ground, one lacking his feet and the other a head, and only three are still standing. And these three aren't even good fighters, small, goblin-like as they are, using their scimitars like maces and not even thinking of protecting their heads. Well, if it's so, thinks Thorin as he ends a life with one swipe of his sword, slams his shield in the second orc's face and thrusts into the unguarded chest; meanwhile, a sober slicing movement of Dwalin's axe sends the head of the third orc rolling down.

"Not fair," growls Dwalin. "You could have left me more."

"Sorry. It was difficult to avoid killing them."

"Anyway, I think next time we go sparring, we'll keep closer to the town. You know the saying, where petty goblins swarm –"

"– great orcs may roam, sure. You're right. What do we do with their weapons? Not an ounce of good metal in the lot, but still…"

"Yeah. It's still iron, better we keep it than some of their friends."

"And the corpses?"

"Mmh. Let them rot? Nobody will know what got them."

-oo00800oo-

But Dwalin is wrong, as they realise in the following days. In this late summer, there are still a few shepherds following their flocks high and far on the slopes. One has found the dead orcs and the news spread like fire among the Men; it turns out that these were the first orcs seen around the place for centuries. And the dwarves begin to stumble on small groups of men huddling together only to disperse when they're noticed; lone passers-by mumble when they see dwarves, sending them fearful glances.

"What's the matter with you all?" asks Thorin to a miner, one who was friendly before, after a week of that treatment.

For the time of a heartbeat the other looks stricken, then he exhales and says: "orcs, if you want to know. And strange dwarves, making magic in dark places and walking like warriors. First come the dwarves, and then come the orcs, as if they'd been called. By you. And we're stuck in the middle."

Thorin musters all his hauteur and his wounded innocence as he answers: "believe me, my friend, I would never call an orc to me. There are very few beings my people hate more than this filth."

"I believe you," answers the other after a while. "But I'm not your friend. And I hope you won't linger around here once your job at the mine is done."

-oo00800oo-

Rain, reflects Thorin as he watches torrents of it through the window of their lodgings, is so different in Dunland from what it was in Erebor. There, clouds would swell over the mountain in the course of the long summer days, finally bursting in heavy drops in the afternoons, bringing in gusts of a much awaited cooling air. Here, the summers are equally hot, but remain dry, until suddenly fall sets in with an abrupt chill and whole days of uninterrupted downpour.

This particular downpour has been lasting for more than a week. At first everyone felt it a welcome release from the oppressive summer heat; then the river began to swell, so that all eye it uncomfortably now, checking the marks and evaluating how many days of rain will be enough for the water to overflow. Thorin finally decided, two days ago, that work at the mine would have to be suspended. Water runs ankle-deep trough the finished galleries, but they are holding – of this there was no doubt. But digging further makes no sense when every fissure in the rock is saturated and makes all the unstable shale of the mountain slide down as fast as it is excavated. The owners protested, of course; so Thorin made them put on boots and took them to the working face through the overflowing tunnels. They went out drenched, muddy, somewhat frightened and deeply angry but didn't talk of going back to work anymore.

Thorin listens to the noises in their house. Someone is busy sharpening a blade somewhere, not Dwalin since a viola plays upstairs, in an Ereborian mode that usually sounds solemn but that Dwalin is using in a half-sad, half distant way that echoes with the sounds of rain. Elsewhere, Ingi's laughter raises amidst the noises of a game of dice. He looks down at his hands and makes himself unclench the windowsill; he's been standing there for most of the morning, and most of the previous day as well. He knows what he set himself to do – but he finds this battle of not-quite love is much harder to fight than anything he's met before.

Above, Dwalin's viol comes to a stop, then begins again with this old sappy predictible love ballad Dwalin mysteriously seems to favour. Thorin shakes himself out of his indecision, strides across the common room and puts on his oilskin coat.

"I'm going out," he says. "I need some air."

"Good luck finding some within the water, then," says Nár from beside the hearth.

-oo00800oo-

He walks fast, his boots splashing in the mud, and soon the rain seems to pierce even his deepest layer of clothes. He realises he's not even sure of where Sutho might be at that hour and decides that her room at the inn is his best option. He strides head bent under his hood and that's why he doesn't see her until the very last moment, when they're about to collide.

"Mind your – Sutho! What are you doing outside in this weather? You don't even have a proper hood on!"

"I – I just sent Huor back home – well, two days ago. I had to tell you."

"I had to see you, too," he blurts.

She shivers. Obviously, it's the cold rain, but it might also some kind of forewarning thought – or fright.

"Your lips are blue," he say. "You're freezing! Here, put this on."

He diverts himself of his oilskin coat, wraps it around her.

"Thorin! You're going to ruin your surcoat – is that fur?"

"Who cares. Rabbit. Can I take you to your room?"

She looks straight into his eyes and her own are impossibly wide as she takes a big breath and for an agonising moment says nothing. He thinks she'll refuse, that even if she's here, so close to him and in his coat, somewhat it's too late – that she only came to send him home as well.

"Yes," she finally says. "You can."

-oo00800oo-

He takes her hand and they run through puddles that end feeling more like rivers of mud. Then they're finally up in her room under the roof and Thorin's hair is so waterlogged it feels like the weight of it is pulling at his scalp. His hood did nothing to protect Sutho's face against the horizontal rain and rivulets of water are running down her brow, through her eyelashes and into her eyes.

"Take off your clothes," they say at the same time, then stop, look at each other, smile and continue, still together: "you're dripping wet!"

"My pleasure," he says, still smiling.

"Mine," she retorts. "Wait. I do have a cloak somewhere that might fit you. The room is too cold for you to stand naked and I'm not about to let you in my bed like that. Here. It's too long and you'll look ridiculous, and don't try to fit your arms into the sleeves or the shoulders are going to burst, but that will do."

She turns her back to him as she quickly takes off her overcoat, skirt and tunic, and finds herself some kind of robe.

"Wait here," she says. "I'm going to fetch a brazier."

-oo00800oo-

He finds himself alone in her room, standing among the sparse and slightly too big furniture. He peels off his remaining layers of clothing, finding himself, as he had thought, wet to the core. Sutho's cloak is indeed too long, very narrow, and made of a coarse wool that itches – but it's warm and dry and welcome and smells of thyme and of her. He eyes the only chair in the room, which is high and looks frail, and opts to drape his clothes over it and to sit instead on the edge of the bed, keeping his back straight and his knees together and feeling awkward. He realises he hasn't got the slightest idea of what he's going to tell her. What he wants, he knows: them to be like they were at the end of last year, them to find back the warmth they created as the days went colder – but it's probably too late, the thinks. Probably.

-oo00800oo-

She's back with a brazier and a large pan that she positions under a leak, looks around, and finally sits at the opposite end of the bed.

"So," he says.

"So."

"Huor went home?"

"Two days ago. We had words."

"Oh, words?"

"About you, if you must know. Or rather, about how I didn't like him to fool around with other women, even if they are dwarves. Thorin, I'm curious, what did he do to you before you erupted into dwarvish insults and broke his nose?"

"I broke his nose? Great. Well, he called me his lady, offered me money and stole a kiss."

She snorts, not unlike Dwalin. "And then the damsel in distress knocked him down. How romantic!"

"Oh, No," he groans. "Not you, too. Dwalin calling me that was bad enough, but you…"

There are entirely too many teeth in her smile as she answers: "well, princess, this might be another thing I have in common with Dwalin."

"Another – what? Is the viol a hidden talent of yours, too? Or axe-wielding?"

"Ah. Not in battle, but I'll let you know I'm a great hand when it comes to cutting logs."

She falls silent, her smile gradually erasing from her face and leaving something harsh in its stead.

"And now you know how it is, being on the other side of the fence. Tell me, Thorin, did it make you feel dirty, that kiss taken against your will?"

He knows what she's thinking of and looks down. "Yes. It did."

Below him, it feels that a great mine pit opened, bottomless, dark, unfathomable – and that's where he has to go. He exhales and takes the first step down, looking back up at her who feels so far away, huddled against the bed headboard.

"My lady," he says, and like so long ago the address wasn't premeditated, but doesn't feel wrong either. "I'll never stop being sorry for what I did to you. Taking what I wanted without being allowed. I would – I. Sutho," he begs, "help me. I don't know how to take it back. I don't know how to mend it!"

"Maybe you can't," she says. "And maybe I can't. I was the one who asked to see what a jealous dwarf would do."

"I'm sorry," he says, taking his head in his hands. "I'm sorry!"

Under his feet the great pit is still open, and there are still steps he can take. He feels like closing his eyes, maybe holding his breath as he opens his mouth to say: "I'm not sure it will mend anything – but then, here's what I can say. I – tell me if I offend you, or if there's something I don't understand. Truly, I still don't understand much of what you'd like me to do. I'm a dwarf. I'm told we don't feel the same way. I begin to see we don't act the same way, or even that our words don't mean the same."

"Great," he hears her mutter. "I've been given the 'I'm a man' line before, but never the 'I'm a dwarf' one."

But her eyes are wide and bright and, he thinks, hopeful, and anyway he has to end what he began. "I won't ask you to marry me," he goes on and hears something like a hitched breath, or a sob. "I can't. I can't spend my life with you, either. My place is with my people –and my people would reject you, as yours are rejecting me. So maybe you'll still wish to pledge yourself to that man –" and now that's an exclamation, maybe of disgust, coming from her "–but you seemed to say that even thus you still wanted something of me. So here's what I can offer. Sutho, if you would have me – for six months, the next six months, maybe a little more if the mining work needs it. I would – stand beside you, if you want it, and lie with you, if you allow it, and spend my nights with you, if you wish it. And I wouldn't take more than what you'd let me. And that's all. That's all I can give you." And his voice breaks on the last words.

He looks up, and she's crying, and he needs to take her in his arms. He rises, and as he's about to do it he remembers. "May I?" he asks as he's already opening his arms.

"Yes," she croaks, and next he sits on his heels close to her on the bed, and that means her head fits perfectly in the hollow of his shoulder. "Thorin, I won't marry Huor," she goes on in a small broken voice. "I rejected his proposition. And now it feels there's a great gap opening in front of me and I don't know where to go. But I'll have you, my dwarvish prince, for six months, or a little more, if that's all you can give me. Because there's one think you took, without me letting you, and that's my heart."

He bends his head to kiss her eyelids – realises he relishes that downward movement – and tastes the salt of her tears. She lets out a small laugh. "And you are really a dwarf, you know. That offer you just made – well, it felt a bit like a business offer. Is there a contract somewhere we should sign?"

"Would you feel better with one?"

"Thorin, my love. I'm not serious!"

"Oh."

"And you're – you're crying."

Truly he is. Because she called him her love. Because she rejected security and wealth and marriage for someone who'll leave her in but a moment. Because it's a love deep enough for a dwarf to understand. Because she's his Sutho again, free as the wind and with more courage than many whether of the race of Men or Dwarves.

-oo00800oo-

"Sutho," he says and his voice comes out deeper and rougher than he expected. "I'd like to lie with you. And – and I'd like to show you that I've learnt my lesson about owning – and be owned. Could we – will you tell me what I can do?"

He hears her swallow. "Yes," she says. "Well. You can touch me. Anywhere you'd like. Anywhere _I_'d like."

"All right." He frees his arm and shoulder from her body and lays her on the bed, which creaks ominously. He smiles. "What about putting the mattress on the ground instead?"

"Yes," she says breathlessly. "Quick."

Soon she's on her back, her robe open, her nipples dark and erect in the cold air.

"Unfair," she says. "You still have my cloak on. Take it off."

He stands and lets it fall from his shoulders, then kneels back beside her. But instead of setting himself to his task, he says: "you know, I watched you once through that window. While you were washing."

"Oh?"

"I was sitting on the rail outside and I didn't dare enter. You were standing in a basin. Wet all over." He passes his tongue on his lips, feeling his mouth suddenly unbearably dry. "Beautiful all over."

He lets his hands hover a hairbreadth over her torso. "I thought I could see gold in your eyes, although you had them nearly closed. There was one candle, it put golden highlights on your breasts, too. You were touching them – can I?"

"Yes," she exhales.

"Touched them like that," he says, first grazing lightly his palms on her nipples, then taking them gently between thumb and forefinger and rubbing. He sees his wide fingers, still ingrained with dirt from the mine, calloused and cracked with hard work, against her soft skin and hard nubs and thinks of the most delicate work they ever had to do.

She groans at the loss as he lets go of one breast, sets his hand flat just below it. "Then your hand went down over your belly among the suds, and I wanted it to be my hand, caressing you, sliding on your skin. I thought, if I were going just a little more on the side, going lightly with the tips of my fingers, then your skin would twitch, and you'd shiver – ah, like that, just like that, and then I'd press more firmly and you'd sort of uncoil and stretch and – Mahal, Sutho, you're so beautiful! And I knew that then if I went on with my other hand on your breast you'd arch for more and –. And you – and your hand went between your thighs and I thought – so soon? Because I told myself I knew of so many other places where I could touch you and make you moan, and I thought I'd use my mouth and – may I?"

"Use your mouth, you dwarf. P– please." She wets her lips with the tip of her tongue and he feels his cock twitch in answer. There's a sliver of gold under heavy eyelids as she glances down him. "But keep your cock to yourself." And he wonders at the hint of steel in her voice despite her looking already so undone as she adds: "and no marking with your teeth."

He doesn't wait to try to guess how Sutho's commands make him feel; there's an incredible joy in just basking in her growing pleasure, in just giving without taking; and if she's in his hands writhing and arching and moaning, he's in hers, too, relinquishing all power of decision – and it's liberating.

So his mouth goes on her neck, just below her ear, and as he nibbles and licks her half growl, half moan is so intoxicating he loses the will to control his hands, just runs them over her body, around the swell of her breasts and down to the small of her back and back up across her long waist, as if he were modelling her shape out of some soft stone, or learning it so that he can recreate her again and again. His hands settle again on her breasts, and he manages to master himself enough to remember not to knead and push but to caress and pinch and give pleasure.

"When I was watching you," he murmurs, his mouth pressed against the skin of her throat, and then the hollow of her neck, "I wanted you to be thinking of me. Did you think of my mouth on your ear? Or on your throat, like that? Did you want that rasp of my beard?"

"I – Yes," she whispers, "I called your name – did you see?"

"I saw – I hoped that was what I was seeing. Did you want me to kiss you down like that?"

"Sweet Estë, Thorin. Your voice. It's doing things to me."

"And my kisses?"

"Yes. No. Yes, they do, but. More. _More_, please."

"Oh. Like that?"

He captures one of her nipples with his mouth, swirls his tongue around, taking care of the other with one hand and running a finger of the other around her hip and the top of her thighs.

"Valar, Thorin! You're teasing!"

He smiles around her nipple. "And you – mmh – you seem to like it, don't you?"

"More, I said. More! Touch me _down there_." And with that she captures the hand that roamed on her thigh and settles it where she wants it.

She's wet and warm and slick and swollen and he grits his teeth and breathes hard and there's nothing that he'd love more than to bury himself in that heat and that's forbidden, or that's something he'll have to earn back, and it's only his fingers that part her folds, only one of them that explore that marvellous slickness and he's the one to moan as he can't help rubbing himself on the mattress.

"Tell me," she says in a wavering voice. "That night, when you sat on the rail, were you touching yourself, too? Watching me?"

"Mahal yes, Sutho. Yes, I was."

He has two fingers inside her, imagines it's his cock, thrusts and turns and thrusts again.

"No – not so fast! Not so deep. Touch my clit, Thorin. Yes! There. Oh Estë! Thorin." Then she adds, breathless. "How was it, touching yourself, that night?"

He actually whimpers, the feel of cloth on his length a poor substitute to what his fingers feel. "Felt dirty. Sordid. Violent."

"Did it feel good?"

"Yes. So good." The whine he hears is his. "Mahal, Sutho, can I touch myself? Now?"

"No," she growls, her voice husky and low. "You're taking care of me, now. Only of me."

He whimpers again, lets out a shuddering breath, steadies himself and adds his mouth to his hands on her. "And that," he says against her core. "Does it feel good?"

But she can only moan, and her breathing comes ragged, and her engorged nub pulses against his finger, and this small victory is his.

He finds a rhythm of tongue thrusts and kisses and then teases ever so lightly with his teeth before thrusting deep again, and her hand joins his over her clit and helps him rub just how she wants it in a pace that increases and she arches and moans and begs for more and suddenly she pushes down on his hand and his mouth, her leg muscles taut and trembling and she howls, _howls_, and there's even more wetness on his lips and his tongue and his beard and as she trembles and spasms and spasms again he raises himself on his elbows, and then sets his head on her belly, and feels the last of her orgasm run through her body.

-oo00800oo-

He sits back, lets his eyes take up the whole of her. She's lying boneless on the mattress, her pale hairless body a stark contrast to the dark cloth of the discarded robe under her; the light of the brazier paints red highlights on her skin and in her tousled dark hair; and she's watching him, golden eyes wide open.

"Valar, Thorin," she says, the tenderness unmistakable in her tone. "You're so hard it must hurt. Touch yourself, now – if you will," she adds, and the huskiness is back in her voice, together with something wicked. "But after all, it's only fair that I get to watch, too."

He nods and lowers his head. He should feel shameful, he thinks, humiliated – and suddenly he fervently hopes that it's not what she felt earlier when he told her of that night. But he doesn't feel any of this now and it's all right, because she looks at him with renewed desire, and adoration, and love, and he knows – they both know – that they need to see each other at their most intimate, and at their most unguarded. So he puts his hand on himself, sitting there on the opposite end of the mattress, his thumb on the leaking tip, and has to remain still for a few breaths; he wants to make it last, at least a little more, and he knows he's so close he could stroke himself to completion in a few seconds.

"Show me," she says, "how you did it that time you watched me.

So he sets a pace, slow, teasing, and like that other time, lets his free hand roam over his stomach, up his torso, around the hardened buds of his nipples, arches his neck down watching his hair fall in front of his face, screening him from the maddening sight of Sutho's renewed arousal, squares his shoulders, willing the pleasure to spread but not deepen and himself to last.

"Valar," she says from her end of the mattress, "you're so beautiful like that."

But suddenly her breath is warm in his ear, and her hand is in his hair. "Your hair," she rasps, "your hair. I can't just watch." And she rakes her fingers in it, knots it around her hand, clears it from his face. "Your face," she says. "Your lips, just slightly open like that." One of her long fingers traces the outline of his mouth, then enters it, and he sucks.

She's pressed flush against his back, her head over his shoulder. "And your hands. Your gorgeous, strong, big hands." And her own longer, slender ones come to cover both of his on his torso and his cock and that's when he doesn't care anymore about lasting and he can't care and he just increases his strokes with her hands following his and he jerks his hips up, and she squeezes, and he comes, messily, on her discarded robe, as she sinks her teeth in his shoulder.

-oo00800oo-

She raises up and retrieves the bed covers, then lies back close to him, draping the covers over them both.

"I'm sorry for biting you," she says. "I hope I didn't –"

He touches the throbbing spot at the nape of his neck, certain it is going to leave a mark. "It's all right," he answers, and feels himself blush. "I actually enjoyed it. Given the context."

In the soft light he guesses her own blush more than he sees it. "Valar help me," she says, "I enjoyed it too – all of this, using you that way. I didn't know I –"

She lets her voice trail down, and he feels like kissing her. And does.

"But this," she says. "This, I missed."

"And I, too."

Again, he lets his hands trail up and down her body; as earlier, he makes them trace and model and remember her shape; there's passion, still, in his movements, but it's deeper; no less burning, but it's a fire that lights his whole body, and his soul, and burns to endure.

"I love your back," he hears himself say. "The way it sways and shoots up like a sapling, and the way it flares at the base, and swirls in dimples."

He runs his palm around her thigh, kneads a little. "I love your knees and ankles, because they look like delicate rods of glass but never break, and I love you thighs, because they're strong and muscled and wide and end up in such voluptuous cheeks." Then he cups her mound, and then slides his hands up over her belly. "I love the curls, there, because they remind me of home. And I love the small roundness of your belly, because –" but he bites his lips, and lets his voice fall.

His hands go back up. "I love your breasts, and you know why," he says, pecking them with small kisses. "And I love your round beardless chin like I never thought I could, and I love your small mouth and your small nose and your forehead and the heaviness of your hair. I love –"

He stops, and in front of him again there's still this deep, dark mine pit, and there's a dwarvish saying telling of the brightest jewels that are found in the deepest darkness, and so he jumps. "I love you," he says.

His hand, still on her breast, feels the sudden racing of her heart, and her breath hitches, and she bites back some exclamation, and it doesn't feel like falling, and so much more like flying.


End file.
